Cough Etiquette:

December 26/2011: Had never heard a phrase 'Cough Etiquette' till recently when 3 ladies came to meet and give me a presentation about the serious situation prevailing in our country due to Tuberculosis (TB). Working for an NGO, the ladies introduced me to this phrase that made me think how and what kind of etiquettes do we Indians have any way. Not only coughing on other people's faces, we are a race of inconsiderate inpiduals thrown together to form a motley crew, thereby forming a nation. We have all heard serious thinkers and philosophers like Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda and many others down the line claiming that the soul of India alone binds us all together to form a country that has vast reserves of spiritual heritage. This so called 'heritage' or the much touted Indian 'culture', it is said loudly, has made us all sail through comfortably while most other nations have had tortuous histories of civil strife, pisions and bitter wars that have culminated in whole races being wiped out. A great example, of course, is the complete annihilation of the native (Red) Indian tribes, slavery and Civil War of the United States of America.

While all this does sound very soothing to the ear since we are ever in search of an identity for ourselves, it also raises many questions about our quality of social interaction, consideration to fellow beings, civic behavior and such other not so pertinent issues that do not really make any sense to most us Indians. What bothers us least are the kinds of social behavior that result in spread of diseases or causes fatal accidents affecting many others who have nothing to do with us whatsoever. Maybe it is our intrinsic character of being a disobedient race that has led us up the path of total inconsideration towards others.

We Indians are supposedly an old group of people who had the good fortune of seeing civilization dawn on us much before others even knew how to wear man made clothes. We are reputed to have invented 0 (zero), therefore we may rightfully claim to be the ancestors who discovered the binary system on which rests the world today because of the immense amount of computing required for every mundane thing that one does nowadays. While on one hand we lay such tall claims to achievements in the field of basic sciences, we are today completely lost in those same very fields.

It could convincingly be argued that Mahatma Gandhi adopted Civil Disobedience as a path to political freedom from the British because he recognized this inherent negative characteristic of the people of this country and intelligently used it to achieve something very positive. The Brits on the other hand, being European and disciplined, were left clueless on how to handle a whole nation of pisive disobedient brown skinned natives. This core issue is what needs to be understood when we want to look at the spread of innocuous yet fatal diseases such as TB or Malaria or even Dengue. Considering the situation, even Leprosy could be thrown into the same bracket. It could safely be said that most of these ailments are due to social inconsideration.

Cough etiquette is one such symbol of total inconsideration. Covering the mouth when coughing would normally be considered a common social behavior on the part of any civilized person. However, it seems as if our centuries old behavior pattern never did include customs to ensure hygiene for the community. If some 5000 plus years ago the people living on the banks of the Indus at Mohenjodaro and its environs could conceive of covering their drains with slabs of lime to disinfect the dirty water below, where on earth have we gone astray that such cleanliness seems alien to us today. Some may find it hilarious to note that the Union Ministry of Tourism has, at last, realized that the filth generated by Indians is a major deterrent for international tourists desiring to come to this sub continent. It has recently launched a program called Clean India wherein it hopes to scrub the dirt from and around at least the historic monuments that dot our countryside aplenty. We are also regularly being shown what civility implies when on tv Aamir Khan, actor, pleads not to spit, piss or do other acts that are obviously abhorrent to developed cultures.

All this, it has to be remembered, is being shown to one of the oldest civilized societies of the world. Where then has the culture of India vanished? Surely the Pakistanis did not steal it from us. Or maybe they did. Especially since both Mohenjodaro and Harappa are in that country now. A closer look at our neighbors such as Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia (forget Singapore) and even Sri Lanka shows some much more considerate and developed societies that have evolved in such fashions that people actually help each other in times of crisis and plight. The exemplary stories written about people of affected areas of these countries after the Tsunami of 2004 are enough indication of peaceful and yet helpful coexistence.

Bad civic habits of a few could endanger lives of thousands of others is a proven fact. However, like the Lokpal Bill where everyone wants to be seen to be correct yet deep within hope that their work should, somehow, get done quickly without much hassles, we all have our own assumptions by which we feel we have to be comfortable even if others suffer when we try to reach our goal. An excellent example is the way all of us behave when alighting from an aircraft. Notwithstanding whether in the 'cattle' class or udderwise, we seem to be in a tearing hurry to reach somewhere (the conveyor belt coughin' up our bags, most probably) where there is no apparent reason to allow heavy hand bags to fall on the head of an innocent fellow traveler. I see these incidents so very frequently that it now feels like a joke. Many a times the air hostesses, out of exasperation probably, do no more bother to ask passengers to sit down till the aircraft comes to a complete halt. And the aero bridge or ladder is connected. Even children traveling by air are not taught to behave properly, for their own safety, by guardians accompanying them. Guess ignorance is everybody's property but obeying instructions meant for personal safety should be comprehensible to all.

Unfortunately, the average Indian of all classes, poor or rich--educated or uneducated, has no Cough Etiquette that could save her/him and others from plenty trouble....