India Smoking: A Ban in Mumbai Sticks
Posted on April 12, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Health, India, International.
MUMBAI, India — The comedian wraps up his act, and announces a seven-minute intermission. Audience members rise and file towards the door. Seven minutes – exactly enough time to get in a smoke. A group of friends forms a circle on the street. All light up.
Such a scene is common in cities like New York, San Francisco and London. But this is India. It’s Mumbai, to be precise, a city not exactly known for its cleanliness and public hygiene.
In Mumbai — with 18 million people and not enough space for all of them — the masses eat, shop, sleep, spit, defecate and throw their trash directly onto the streets.
Many men do not look twice before spitting onto the sidewalk red juice from chewing paan, a leaf wrapped around spices, nuts and often tobacco. Drivers lean out their rickshaws, which carry stickers reading “Spitting causes TB [tuberculosis],” and hack phlegm directly onto the road, often less than a foot away from other cars and pedestrians. Some people open the windows to their cars and houses and casually chuck trash outside.
When a ferry reaches Alibag, a coastal town south of Mumbai, passengers gather their garbage and throw it into the water. Children in slum areas squat over open sewers. Even in middle class suburbs, it is not unusual to see naked street children defecating on the side of a busy road.
But not everywhere.
For all the grime on the outside, step into one of Mumbai’s restaurants, cafes, bars or even discos, and you find another world: a fresh and clean one.
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