Germans are well known for their discipline and decorum in public. They address each other as Herr even when abusing each other. But this open instruction in our motherland to curb a universal habit of peeing in public calls into question a fundamental, existential freedom. Every Indian man believes that the Indian constitution guarantees the right to pee in any place and at any time in an act of total freedom. I do not know if this faith in the Indian constitution also extends to one's sense of freedom when it comes to domestic violence, but definitely, no Indian man feels compelled to curtail himself in expressing this primeval instinct of passing water.
Now, one of the reasons why malls have taken India by storm is that they feature clean toilets on most floors for that much-needed release after drinking lots of coffee, carbonated drinks and other stuff in gregarious ways, These malls feature in general better toilets than cinemas. But elsewhere, at bus stations, street corner toilets, and inside schools and colleges, most toilets are quite dirty. The Swacch Bharat campaigns are having their due impact in many ways, but the Indian male is far from curbing his existential instinct to pee on the roadside. I have heard that even metro stations do not have toilets.
So I ask you, what is the remedy? How do we solve this issue? It is well and good that there are artistic twists at the German institute and such places in communicating the undesirability of peeing on their compound walls. But I feel we need a cultural revolution and we should make it a kind of anthem taught in schools that one should not indiscriminately pee anywhere and everywhere.
Do you have any ideas?
