The Spitting Phlegmatic World

December is very cold in Delhi. Smog grips life frigidly. There is enough pollution and traffic to create serious trouble to old lungs, coughing asthmatic creatures. In any case Indians are world famous in leaving an endless unbroken spit chain on the sidewalks, hedges, walls, pillars, roads, anywhere, even on the passersby many a time. Summer spit is relatively tolerable, a silvery gob having numerous little bubbles, saliva trails, almost innocuous, at least you have to convince yourself as you struggle to avoid the spit mines, only to fail. People do it with relish, the art of spitting. During winters but it becomes obnoxious. Lungs get affected. Spit turns phlegm now, terrible looking, dense, yellow, puke inducing. You have to save your footwear at any cost. More pollution, more smoke, more phlegm.

There are rag-picking urchins, who roam around, very tiny, faceless, almost unnamed. They let out a seasoned jet stream of spit that lands at quite a distance. Sometimes they even spit from an unseen distance at the nice shirts of the more privileged ones. This mischief, this grudge, some criminality in its womb, in a tiny heart and tinier mind in tiniest body. Dangerous probabilities, at least for the higher society. There are very old figures. Lying hidden in a sack. You do not know whether it contains a dead body or a live human being. The suspense is over; a terribly old, dishevelled head of a scary skeleton of a female comes out to have its share of spitting. Not enough throwing power in the lungs, it trickles down, the saliva and phlegm. Hangs down and tries to claim its share of earth. The spitting children; the spitting old woman. One almost recently born; the other about to die on any of these cold nights. We need special care as we enter and fade out of life. Generally kids have parents to protect them from all dangers. These kids do not have anybody to bring them into shape like a pot-maker shapes his earthenware. The elders are supposed to be in the same safe hands as they fade out of life. Kids and elders are the same: To be pampered, to be protected. This spitting world is a different one though. Careless, roofless, unprotected, they just spit, sometimes even more venomously than a Cobra.   

The dirtier blame game to clean the dirt is on somewhere far away in better environs.  Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change, 2009 is busy bookishly as a political tug of war between the developing and the developed world. Anyway the issue is just fit for politics because we have done irreversible damage to the environment. Let them just accuse each other now. Things will never be the same. We are up for nasty times! Our best of sincerity is just not enough to undo the blind massacre of the environmental systems for the last few centuries.

The fate of the air for their lungs being decided on another continent, five labourers get into the brand new AC DTC bus, red coloured, low-floored, swanky interiors to stamp India’s progress. It has been a mistake on their part. It’s damn costly, the ride. To make it more intolerable there is no open window to allow them to spit out their revolting miseries. So they have to retain gutka, tobacco and beetle nut stuffed in their mouths, like they keep their miseries in slums stuffed in their souls. ‘Didn’t you know the fair,’ the conductor reprimands them as they stand shell-shocked after getting the figure. It is INR 125 to the destination—almost equal to a full day wage earned by each of them. Pain is evident on their faces. To make it more painful, they cannot even spit. Bloody thing is sealed to keep the interiors warm. They feel the hot air gushing out of the air-holes along the sides. It is a bit comforting; they seek solace in it.

Neither in a position to go back (because so many eyes are expectantly ogling them for their next move) nor able to stand there because of the economic pinch of the mishap, they just stand there trying to come to terms with the reality. And even deprived of their poor man’s right to spin anywhere! ‘At least there is some space to stand comfortably and reach the workplace without much pains! And also the warm air,’ they appear calculating the takeaways for the many bucks gone from their pockets. They should know that it’s a very costly bus, costing 5.5 million rupees. So they should contribute. They should feel proud that they are giving the largest chunk of their salary to the Delhi Government.  

Now that unprecedentedly high living costs are eating into the meagre salaries of the labourers in Delhi, isn’t it suitable that they move to smaller cities to give bigger chances to their tiny dreams? Some voice of sanity should convince them to go for this option. Instead of rotting like garbage items, they ought to fight it out in smaller towns and cities. Delhi is too big now, and equally bad. Just see the countless humans lying around even more worthlessly than the garbage dumps! Let the big people enjoy the polluted, vitiated air in the national capital. Poor people, let us just go back to our roots!