The smell is back, Eww the ssmelll, how I hate it, how we both hate it, so RANK! It’s become an in-house joke, have you ever noticed how many horror films begin with ‘The’ – ‘The Exorcist’, ‘The Ring’, ‘The Haunting’, ‘The Birds’, ‘The Reaping’ etc. ‘The Smell’ is horrific, it’s assault on the senses is worse than any horror film I’ve seen, it starts to waft in and then ‘BANG’ so incredibly overpowering, all you can do is laugh. It took me awhile to pinpoint the source of the smell, once I started to put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together it became all too obvious. ‘The Smell’ appears after the rain (it’s monsoon, so it rains fairly often), the campus is surrounded by slums, it’s not uncommon when walking down the street to see people doing their ‘business’ on the side of the road. In the heat it dries up pretty fast and the smell doesn’t linger, but when it rains (and when it rains it really rains, a couple of times I’ve been outside the campus and driven through a foot and a half of water) all the excretion(human, there’s hundreds of people living in the slums, and animals, cows who wander the city and the mangy dogs you see everywhere) is disturbed, so ‘The Smell’ is the smell of excretion drying out. Sickness and epidemics are rife during the monsoon season, now I see why, on smelling ‘The Smell’ you can almost visualise the nasty bacteria spreading in the puddles, making it’s way through the air ready to pounce on the weakest target. I knew before coming to India that hygiene was an issue, but it’s not until you see it, smell it, do you realise the extent of the problem. Many of of the NGO’s working in the slums put a huge emphasis on teaching people the importance of good hygiene, they target the children- the next generation, catch them while they’re young- before bad hygiene habits get ingrained. More than a couple of times when travelling and I’ve been forced into a situation where I’ve had to use the public toilet( and believe me I try desperately to hold on), the odour omitted from the door metres before I’ve reached it nearly knocks me off my feet, once inside I’ve been greeted with the sight of women squatting in the vestibule, the floor’s all wet, there’s little brown surprises in the corners of the room and no running water. My western need for privacy forces me to wait for the next cubical, I hold my breath, arch my toes up and my internal monologue is “Don’t think about it! Don’t think about it! Don’t think about!”. The hideous platform thongs* so popular over here make complete sense, feet are well out of harms way. “Why go in the toilet when you can find a tree to squat behind?” I almost feel you wondering. Well again it’s that need for privacy, men/leering men are everywhere and one could say they follow you like a bad smell, I’d rather take a stinky suffocating toilet cubical than flash my skinny white arse at a crowd of ogling men!
*Thongs- please when in India remember to call them sandals, I’ve foe-pared a few times mentioning thongs, I’m mistaken for talking about underwear, with hilarious reactions I must say!
