‘Swachchh Bharat’ works only when people don’t spit paan on walls with images of gods

“Give a man a fish
His hunger for to ease —
Give him a fishing trawler
And he’ll drain the seven seas…”
From Kaid -e-Hajam, Prisoner of the Barber of Seville by Bachchoo

Probably the only way to tackle the plague of graffiti scarring the world’s walls is to have huge graffiti on each saying “All Graffitisers Will Be Severely Punished” or other warning words. If this graffiti took up all the available space… problem solved!

This brilliant idea came to me recently in Mumbai while observing the slogan “Swachchh Bharat” on several walls above heaps of rotting garbage.

A memorable wall slogan of my childhood said “Commit No Nuisance”. Being unfamiliar at that tender age with the use of euphemism, I imagined that the injunction applied to loud noises, picking pockets or noses, etc. It was only later in my short and happy life that the urine stains on the walls and pavements under these signs brought home the quality of nuisance they sought to prohibit. And poor Vidia Naipaul was pilloried for noticing in his first book on India that several of its citizens openly “committed nuisance”.

I fervently hope that Narendraji has not patented the slogan “Swachchh Bharat” because I am now heading a campaign to paint the slogan “Swachchh so-and-so”, the so-and-so standing variously for London and other British cities and boroughs.

My campaign is in response to a new epidemic that has recently come to the attention of municipal authorities all over the UK. It is the second such epidemic and I suppose will now earn a name, just as successive hurricanes are called Althea, Brenda, Catherine and Eglantine — and breakouts of influenza are labelled bird flu, asian flu, swine flu, flea flu, etc.

Gentle reader, I admit to my shame that I only became aware of the first epidemic when the second hit the streets. Before it did, I walked the pavements of Britain observing the little circles of white embedded in the paving stones, subconsciously accepting these as works of contemporary art or as attempts by mysterious powers to bring an awareness of the pattern of the solar system to ignorant pedestrians. Imagine my self-critical alarm when I was told that these little white circles were splattered chewing gum that had been stamped into the fabric of the paving stones.

I found this difficult to believe as my observation told me that there were 20 such chewing gum stains under every pace I took on certain pavements. Where did they come from? I have observed probably 90 people out of every 100 that I pass in the streets muttering with moving lips as they walk. In the old days I would with pity classify them as deranged and talking to themselves, their gods or their phantoms. Today I know they are making idle chatter through their mobile phones with ethereal followers and “friends”. But people chewing gum? I haven’t observed many or any. Yes, some nervous golfer on TV, but hardly hundreds of men, women and children one passes on the streets.

The local government association has now published the fact that 95 per cent of the UK’s main shopping streets are gum-stained and England and Wales spend £60 million on cleaning these up. An accompanying statistic says that a stick of gum costs 3p to buy — that’s approximately three rupees. It costs £1.50 to clean up each square meter of pavement — that’s 150 rupees.

Chewing gum manufacturers are now being asked to contribute to this cost. That’s like asking Mumbai’s water supply companies to pay for disinfecting the “nuisance” on the city’s walls. Wrigley’s, the main chewing gum seller, has wriggled out of the obligation by announcing that it is investing instead in campaigns to discourage littering. I suppose this means graffiti painted on pavements saying “Do Not Spit”. Or perhaps they mean to invest in “organic” spittoons every 50 yards.

And so, to the second urban pavement epidemic which has so far been labeled TSW — The Shame of Wembley. Blood-red stains have for years appeared on the pavements of this district of the London Borough of Brent. No, this is not, gentle reader, though in today’s London it could very well be, the detritus of drug-related teenage-gang knifings and shootings. It is the stain on the pavements and on the reputation of the Indian community of Wembley of chewed and spat-out paan.

The Brent council says it spends £30,000 (`3 crores) on cleaning up the mess. Most irreverently, the Shri Sanatan Hindu Mandir of Wembley testifies that its forecourts are beset with paan stains.

In India, with the passing of the British stiff upper-lip injunction to refrain from “committing nuisance”, the ingenious ploy to prevent paan-spit pollution was to plaster endangered spots with religious images. On the landings of staircases, where the temptation to spit into a corner seemed acceptable, there appeared tiles or stenciled images of Krishna, Kali, Ganesh, Guru Nanak and the Meccan Kaaba. This would presumably inhibit potential spitters. If there were red stains despite the presence of these sacred images, you can be sure they were the work of defiant atheists or even of Zoroastrians, Buddhists or Christians whose sacrosanct images I don’t recall seeing — no crucifix, no German portrait of Zoroaster holding up one finger to the heavens, no Buddha with folded legs under the scared tree. Perhaps there are such inhibitors plastered in particular spots which I haven’t come across.

The ploy seems to work on those staircase landings and on other spots where no nuisance is committed.

Community volunteers in Wembley and presumably in the other boroughs infested with this anti-social behaviour have begun clean-up campaigns. And gentle reader, having gathered my thoughts, I have decided to abandon my slogan campaign. I am strongly minded to start an enterprise importing tiles with sacred images from India and flogging them to the councils of Britain.

(There’s undoubtedly more money in that than peddling one’s opinions in columns! Sssshhh! — Ed.)