Sandstorm In A Teacup

… and a partridge in a pear tree. Perhaps if the Indians were to ever re-write the 12 days of Christmas, they would include the 31 men a-poohing. But that would make it a very long Christmas, and a very long song, as presumably they would have to include 30 men a-peein’, 29 women a-sitting in a tractor, 28 auto-rickshaw drivers a-following you, and so on...

As I woke up on the overnight Udaipur-Jaipur train, I opened the curtains thinking “hey, it would be great to have a look at the countryside” to find we had slowed down smack bang in front of a man squatting in a field having his morning shit.

“Fantastic”, I thought. And no doubt, so did he. I mean, he must have woken up that morning and called out “Darling, it’s a lovely day outside – I’m going for a shit in the field! Hopefully the Udaipur-Jaipur train will go by at the same time!”

“Great idea, sweetheart. Have a good one – oh, and don’t wave at them like you did last time, will you?”

Maybe it was such a great day for having a pooh in the field that all of his friends decided to join him. Dotted around the fields were five men, all having their morning pooh. As the train moved along at an excruciatingly slow pace, I started counting them. A total of 31 men along one small stretch of track were having a pooh – and they were ALL facing the train. Is this some form of Indian trainspotting? “I know, I need a pooh and I haven’t seen a VX357 wide-gauge diesel train for months – coming to the field?”

“Great!”

To be fair, there probably aren’t any toilets within a fifty-mile radius – a pretty difficult situation for a Hindu whose religion places such importance on expelling unwanted substances from the body. Ever noticed the number of times Indians clear their nose or hock and spit on the road? Ever noticed the men peeing against the “do not urinate” signs in India? (OK, you might not have – but I did). It is far more important to keep the body clean and pure than it is to keep the environment clean, which partly explains why there is so much pooh around in certain parts of India.

So why doesn’t the state do something about it? It’s not as if the state is entirely impoverished – and it’s not as if there aren’t examples of something being done about it. In the city of Surat in Gujarat, urgent action actually had to be taken after a plague in 1994. Yes, a plague in our times. After heavy rains and flooding blocking the drains, the city was overrun with rubbish, excreta and dead animal carcases, bringing in the rats and water-borne diseases that killed thousands.

So – they cleaned up. Surat is now one of the cleanest cities in India – if not the cleanest, and stands as an example to the rest of the country. People only pooh outside because there’s nowhere else to go!