Consider this scenario: A man returns home from work, and desperately wants to urinate. He rushes to his bathroom (an instinct that is seasoned only when at home), but finds it locked.
Unable to hold on any further, he faces his living room wall, and relieves himself. Imagine the effects now, which could be either of these – the man’s wife/mother/sister/ brother/father is shocked and plans to take strict action so that he never does such a thing again; or, they just look the other way and murmur bitter nothings about this disgusting thing that the man has just done.
Now, cut to the public spaces, to a case wherein an individual does the same disgusting thing by the roadside or into a bush.
The first reaction to the man relieving himself rarely takes place. It’s almost always the second reaction that we resort to – indifference, or at most, some expressions of shock or anger within, but nothing more. Interestingly, the second reaction will never be the case if an individual urinates on a wall of a room inside his own house – or for that matter anybody else’s house. Never! People are at their civilised best when in their own homes or visiting anyone else’s homes as guests – they always ask for the bathroom to do the job.
Then why does that civilised behaviour evaporate when they step into the streets? And, why are the authorities not taking a hard stand as would a perpetrator’s family members had he resorted to urinating on a sofa in his living room, or his bed in his bedroom?
Clearly, this means there is more enforcement and a sense of cleanliness within one’s home than there is for our public spaces. And yet, in our patriotic zeal – that mostly erupts only on January 26 or August 15 – we call our country ‘Motherland’, a concept that should actually have brought out a sense of extreme pride among us to keep our city, state and country clean and hygienic!
The nuisance hits one in the face so bad that one is left wondering: “Why do Indians potty-train their children at all? Let them grow up to piss wherever they want to because there’s going to be no one to stop them!”
