No Itinerary

So lets talk about spitting shall we? Indian men spit a LOT, they just adore having a good old spit.

Sometimes they’re chewing paan, a paste of berries and spices wrapped in leaves (betel nut leaves?). Paan makes their spit red and can stain walls permanently. Often if you go into a slightly less-than-posh indian building the walls of the stairwell are covered in loads of diagonal red splashes from years of paan spits.

When they’re not chewing paan that doesn’t mean they can’t still have a good old spit though. Then though, you get the joy of the preceeding SNOOOOOOORT! and then the loud HOOOOOICK! before they loose off a proper loogie (usually aimed towards my feet).

Now in a city like Mumbai these can be coming from any direction, sometimes they might be from a bus window above you, others from a rickshaw driver as he whizzes past. No-one has spat upwards at me from below ground level yet, but I’m sure it’s merely a matter of time.

However, the best time is if you’re in a quiet resort, maybe a hill station or on a beach. Then you may have the luxury of thin walls allowing you to experience the -

DAWN CHORUS!

Imagine the sound of frenzied hocking and snorting echoing through the peace of your resort, seemingly coming from every direction. Broken up by the occasional stacatto HARUM-HUM-HUM cough to bring up every tiny piece of lung butter.

The only thought that passes through your mind as you experience this wonderful phenomenon is: “I wonder which of these guys is cooking my breakfast”.

Stunning.

So my message to the majority of the male Indian population is this:

NO!

BAD!

STOPPIT!

Thank you for listening.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 9:31 am and is filed under 154 days around the world. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.