The shit in India

If cleanliness is indeed next to godliness then India must be the most ungodly place in the world.

Okay, so cleanliness obviously isn't next to godliness because if it were Westminster would be full of gurus, not politicians and Singapore wouldn't have 'The Four Floors of Whores' it would have 'The Ten Floors of God's Laws'... or something.

All joking aside, India is a very godly place. All Indians believe in God (or should I say, Gods, because in the Hindu faith there are over a million of them), they just also happen to not believe in basic hygiene.

I've been meaning to write a blog on the subject of the shit here for a little while because, sadly, it is one of the most affecting aspects of this country. There is shit everywhere! Find a quiet spot in the middle of nowhere, somewhere seemingly untouched by human hands, look closely and soon enough you'll spot some rubbish. You have to be constantly aware of it too, washing your hands at every opportunity, because if you forget then you are liable to end up getting very sick.

Some days you barely notice the shit. It is this way for many of the Indians, who have of course lived with it their whole lives. Wealthy Indian housewives go out to do the weekly shopping, immaculate in their beautiful saris, they seem to inhabit an entirely different dimension to the filthy, mangled beggars, the piles of rotting food, the dust and the open sewers that surround them. Your mind just begins to censor it from your senses. You become hardened to it. It's amazing what you can become accustomed to.

Other days you cannot escape it.

Like today for example. Today I'm really not in the mood for wandering Indian streets smeared with every kind of filth imaginable. "When is anyone ever in the mood for filth, particularly the kind that you can smear?" I hear you ask. Well, never - of course, but as I said before, most of the time you can kind of tolerate it.

The other day I witnessed a woman (a different class of woman to the one I described a moment ago) pulling human effluvia onto the pavement from an open sewer and then scraping it into a wicker basket, presumably to take off and use as some kind of fertiliser. To be fair, the stuff did look incredibly fertile - I imagine there was already billions of friendly little organisms thriving in it, wriggling around in anticipation of becoming aquainted with my tummy.

Death in a wicker basket, my dear readers. Death in a wicker basket.

I've not had much more than a mild case of the wicked complaint known universally as Delhi belly, but I've not actually been to Delhi yet either, so I really shouldn't count my chickens, should I? After two months I am suprised I've not been sick - with all the truly hideous odours emanating from the gutters it's a wonder you don't get deathly ill just from breathing the air. A few times I've managed to convince myself that I was about to get sick, conclusions that were promptly followed by much whimpering and groaning and dread.

The litter problem in India does have its advantages. After being scrupulous in my efforts to keep Bristol and Sydney tidy, I now find myself on holiday from being conscientious about my disposal of personal litter. You can just chuck your rubbish anywhere and I often derive great pleasure from doing so. In fact, dropping a well placed cigarette butt here or a sweet wrapper there can actually radically improve the ambience of a street lined with human excrement. An average Indian observer will look at you as if you're completely mad if, during a fleeting moment of Western guilt, you stop and optimistically search for a recepticle in which to throw your refuse.

I am now largely conditioned to the way things are here but the Indians still have the capacity to shock me with their unsanitary ways.

Vanessa and I were travelling down a mountainside by steam train on a narrow guage railway a couple of weeks ago. Apart from averaging a speed of about ten kilometres an hour, it was a very pleasant journey, idyllic really - babbling brooks and tea plantations, that sort of thing. Here's a picture - I can't be bothered to describe it any more than that, it's getting late and I'm getting hungry. Here's a picture of the train too, while I'm at it. Anyway, we were sat opposite an affluent-looking Indian family - a married couple with a sweet little toddler.

When a slightly caustic smell began to permeate in the carriage, I came to the conclusion that a certain fellow passenger's nappy needed a change. Sure enough, there was some swift re-organisation of bags by the father, a fresh nappy appeared and was handed to the mother and the little one's dress was unfastened. At this point I decided it would be polite to look out of the window for the remainder of the procedure.

A minute later the smell had dissipated and the rustling of baby clothes had ceased. I turned away from the window and found no visible evidence of the recent operation. Vanessa nudged me and said, "I wondered where that dirty nappy was going..."
"Why? What did she do with it?" I asked, slightly perplexed at the extent of Vanessa's interest in the soiled diaper.
"Straight out of the window. She didn't bat an eyelid!"
"No!" I whispered, incredulous as the ambience created by the beauty of the surrounding countryside was suddenly destroyed by the image of a shitty nappy hurtling through the air and landing in the babbling brook I mentioned earlier, or on the head of a poor, forest creature.
"Yes!" giggled Vanessa, "It whizzed past your head! I'm amazed you didn't see it!"

Of course she threw it out of the window! That's what Indians do on trains, I've learnt. Everything ends up on the tracks: spit, piss, shit... everything - even disposable nappies. Especially disposable nappies.

Anyway, that's enough talking dirty.