Abha Eli Phoboo

Kathmandu:

No discharge is more commonplace than spewing phlegm or saliva. Strangely, the habit also causes the least embarrassment to the person engaged in it. Our reporter presents a case against it

Before the American soldiers were sent to war in Iraq in 2003, they spent nearly three weeks learning Arab etiquette at Ocean Springs, Los Angeles. They were instructed to avoid spitting in public because it would insult the Iraqis. In the 1800s, many women in the western countries stopped wearing their long trailing dresses into town for fear that they would pick up sputum and drag tubercle bacilli home. Let us take a walk through our city streets on a morning in the 21st century.

It is crisp and cold but the sunny rays have grown warmer with the advent of summer. You are all ready to breathe in the fresh air but there is a loud frightening sound behind you that sounds like someone being strangled. You turn around and there stands an old man spitting as if his life depended on it.

A little further off, a group of young boys stand in a circle, cigarettes in hand. They are laughing, blowing smoke and spitting. Why? “We are trying to see who can spit the furthest,” tells Suraj Man Shakya, a 22-year-old. Shaking your head, you walk on.

The morning vegetable market spills out onto the road causing traffic jam. You elbow through customers bargaining furiously, gingerly picking your way around the cauliflowers, spinach and carrots. Spitting is common here and sputum litters the streets. “When you have a cold, you can hardly help not spitting,” says Gyani Shrestha, a vegetable vendor. “What do you do with your phlegm?” Ughh!Proper sanitation and pollution means that respiratory flu is

common especially in winter and in Nepal, people dispose of their phlegm freely. On the streets, sidewalks and buses, they let it fly regardless of whether it is harmful or socially unacceptable. It is considered a bad habit, yes but only among the so-called cultured people.

At times, you might catch even the elite sneaking a spit just for the heck of it. In 1997, when ‘Titanic’ became a blockbuster, fans of Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet were practising their spitting skills, imitating a scene from the Oscar-winning movie.

“I spit when I see dirty places,” says Joseph Tamang, a class two student at The Excelsior School. Does spitting when you see a dirty place help clean it? “No. But it’s become a habit now.” “There are different explanations to this spitting habit,” shares Murari Prasad Regmi, professor and head of the Central Department of Psychology, Tribhuvan University. “Biologically, the secretion of saliva varies from person to person. In regard to

etiquette, you need to consider many things. Sometimes emotional insecurity leads to people biting nails and spitting them out. Negative thinkers spit to express dissatisfaction; a bodily reaction like throwing out what is within them. Young people sometimes spit to express resentment; it is a pseudo attempt to balance dissatisfaction.”The narrow alleys and byways are dark brown with drying betel juice. “You cannot help it because you cannot swallow the residue,” explains Sumesh Agrawal, a 40-year-old businessman and father of two, chewing betel, his gums a rusty red.

“We conducted a study on environment and hospital waste management,” shares Chanda Rana, executive director of Save the Environment Foundation. “TB germs can be found in 80 per cent of Nepalis. Besides the health conditions, environmentally also, it is damaging. An uncivilised and disgusting habit, it is often ignored. If you take a look at our offices even the ministries, especially the health ministry, it is terrible. The people say that so many people come that it cannot be controlled. We are planning to launch a campaign for hygiene this Environment Day.”The demise of public spitting in most Western communities occurred well before what seem to be the first state sanctioned moves against it late last century. Health education, awareness and anti-spitting campaigns need to materialise in this part of

the world too. Why not begin with you?

In the middle ages, spitting at meals was permitted, provided it was under the table and not on or across it. In 1530, Erasmus counselled that it was “unmannerly to suck back saliva, as equally are those whom we see spitting at every third word not from necessity but from habit.” He recommended the use of “a small cloth”.

•Writing in 1558, the worldly Della Casa had “often heard that whole peoples have sometimes lived so moderately and conducted themselves so honourably that they found spitting quite unnecessary.”

•By the 15th century, Courtin observed that “formerly... it was permitted to spit on the ground before people of rank, and was sufficient to put one’s foot on the sputum. Today that is an indecency.”

•By the 18th century, writings indicate spitting remained commonplace (“You should not abstain from spitting, and it is very ill mannered to swallow what should be spat”) and that the etiquette of spitting, at least among the bourgeois who read such guides, was to be determined by the company one was in (no spitting “when you are with well-born people”) or the location (“not in all places with waxed or parquet floors”).

•In 1908 in Massachusetts a health inspector is recorded to have said that spitting on the floor was common in every tailor’s shop he visited, but the attitude of employers was that “of course they spit on the floor; where do you expect them to spit, in their pockets?”

•In 1886 the French Hygiene Council issued the first public orders against spitting, and New York City issued a strong ordinance against public expectoration in 1896. Exhibitions featuring charts and models explaining the dangers of spitting were held in New York in the 1890s.

•By 1916, 195 of 213 American cities with populations over 25,000 had rules in force against public spitting. A study of 74 cities with spitting laws showed that only 36 had made any arrests and only 13 made more than 20 arrests. New York was apparently the mecca of anti-spitting zealotry and had made 2,513 arrests — 73 per cent of the national total. In Cincinnati, 700 boy scouts and members of the Anti-Tuberculosis League painted thousands of “Don’t Spit” signs on the sidewalks in one night.