Stepping out of a Lisbon home one
warm summer afternoon, what hit the itinerant first was the stench. It wasn’t
overpowering, but it was there, hanging in the air like a silent, but unwelcome
guest at an intimate party. It was the stench of dog droppings. These droppings
are an unpleasant fact of Lisbon life, given that most residents of Lisbon,
unlike in some other parts of the “developed world”, do not normally scoop away
the waste their pets create on public sidewalks. This tendency of course is
pretty much like the attitude to waste in India, where we prefer to leave this
task to the public sanitation workers. Perhaps this smell was so obvious because;
unlike in the European winter, when these smells melt away with their source,
under the beating of the unending rain, in summer the odours of city streets
intensify, building up like the strong perfumes of spirits in snifters.
If the smell of dog droppings was
the smell of this Lisbon street, then the stench of human waste is the smell
that one associates with urban north India. It’s not a smell that goes away. On
the contrary, this stench sticks to you, and not just to your skin, but to your
memory. The stench returns to haunt you for years after you have left the
Gangetic plains, coming back every time you think of the suffocating heat of the
summer, when as in Lisbon, the odours of the street intensify in aroma. Indeed,
after walking away from the smell of dog droppings on that street, it was the
fecal smell of North India that hung suffocatingly like a plastic bag over the
itinerants nostrils, like some phantom twin of the legendary third note of a
perfume.
It seems a shame to not share the
following anecdote while on the subject of the ubiquitous fecal presence in
north India. While the facticity of this anecdote is dubious, the person who
recounted the story swore it was true, producing as evidence, the fact that his
brother once worked for the Indian Railways. The story tumbled out one festive
evening when he advised us to not consume in any form the water that runs in
the plumbing of the passenger coaches of the Indian Railway. It turns out that
the lids of the water tanks on the roofs of these coaches would invariably be
improperly fastened, coming loose in the course of the journey, exposing the
water within to the elements. What makes
this situation bothersome is that as the (t)rusty steeds of the Indian rail
swoosh towards their destination the currents of air created apparently sweep
up all forms of minute particles in their path, depositing part of them in the
exposed containers of water on their backs. Given the manner of waste disposal
on the Indian rail, and the alternate use that the tracks and their vicinities
are put to, it is not surprising that an examination indicated a high content
of fecal matter in the water contained in these tanks!
It is smell that stays with you
long after the moment has passed. Smell that strikes a bell somewhere in your
subconscious and draws out memories long-forgotten, to be mulled over again.
Some smells however, and indeed, their associated memories, one could do well
without.
(A version of this post was first published in The Goan on 8 Dec 2012)
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