“I’m antibans,”
I said to Shri Husband.
He stared at
me for a couple of seconds and asked in a staccato tone: “What. Is. Antibans?”
“Anti-bans,” I
said, correcting him slowly, clearly, adding: “Means I don’t like people
banning books, films, like that.”
“Why?” he
asked. That’s his most often used word, by the way, along with ‘How’. Whenever
someone asks him a question, he asks a counter question with either Why or How
or both. If someone tells him, for example ‘the milk is boiling over’ or
‘switch off the fan’ or ‘the car battery is dead’, immediately his lips spout
the word “Why?” or “How?” It’s an affliction. There must be a medical term for
it.
Anyway, I told
him why I was anti-bans: “We can’t ban the Press, freedom of speech, beef,
sleeveless blouses. It’s wrong. We’re a free country. This is the 21rst
century.”
First
interruption from Shri Husband: “You mean we ‘shouldn’t’ ban those
things. There’s a vast difference between ‘can’t’ and ‘shouldn’t’.”
Lecture-baazi shuru, I told myself.
Aloud
I said, “Yes-yes-yes”, glad that he’d understood.
“But what’s
wrong with bans?” His second affliction is that he must start counter
everything I say with a ‘but’, argue for the sake of arguing.
I stayed quiet.
He took my
silence as encouragement and continued with the lecture: “Banning is good. We
should ban bottled drinking water, for example. No-one seems to mind lack of
potable water. Hotels that advertise holidays in the lap of nature don’t mind
increasing plastic litter by the truckloads. I read several letters to the
editor protesting lack of traffic signals at busy junctions, about taxi fares,
about how our culture is dying out, but not one insists that every restaurant
should provide filtered, safe-to-drink water.”
He inhaled and
I squeezed in a couple of words: “Tell me, why should the government ban
cigarettes? or liquor? or gambling? We are adults, we know what’s bad for us,
let us decide.”
Shri Husband’s
hates someone disrupting his interruption. He raised his voice a couple of
decibels higher: “What I say is, if you want to ban something, ban the root,
the cause, the root-cause. If you want to ban cigarettes or gutka, ban or at
least strictly monitor the cultivation of tobacco. Now, liquor…” a momentary
silence, then- “why would anyone want to ban liquor? (True Goan, my man, muah!)
As for gambling, there are other, more reliable options to earn money.”
I nodded in
happy agreement. We were taking a late-night walk on the new pavement along
Chogm road whilst during this dialogue, watching a busload of tourists buying
cashews, flapping towels to dry them out, letting children gambol dangerously
close to the traffic, munching snacks they’d carried along from home, chucking
fruit-juice tetra-packs wherever they could, chatting loudly, clicking
photographs on their cameras, wiping chins, picking noses, unpacking
zip-bursting overnight bags, wiping footwear at the edge of the road, familiar,
lovable sight. As we neared, a woman raised one hand, curled up the fingers
towards the palm, leaving the little ‘pinky’ finger up. ‘Susu’, she silently
worded what she wanted/intended to do. Worried that passers-by might halt and
watch, she gathered her kinswomen to trudge along with her to the shrubs that
would camouflage her whilst she voided her bladder in peace and privacy.
Between the fence of a building in progress and the shadow of a lamp-post, safe
from the blinding headlights of the speeding traffic and unafraid of scorpions
and snakes, she had chosen a perfect site. She emerged smiling.
That was the
signal for everyone to follow suit. Multiple hands were raised, flagged by the
upright ‘pinky’ indicating the need to answer Nature’s Call.
I clucked
disgustedly.
Shri Husband shushed me. “Tourists are our
bread and butter,” he said in a low tone. “We have to provide clean and
convenient eateries and toilets all over the state. At least in the
tourist-infested areas.”
“Infested!” I
whispered back, giggling. “Sounds like an invasion of worms.”
“Wrong word,”
he agreed, “Let’s call them areas rich in tourist-dependent incomes, shall we?”
We walked on.
We agreed (either it’s the age or the weather, we seem to be agreeing on many
topics these days) that unless there are enough loos, garbage bins, drinking
water taps and parking spaces for buses, tourists are going to have a difficult
time and we villagers will continue to crib.
“Trouble is,”
Shri Husband said, “Country-wide, we tend to concentrate on trivia like naming
roads and banning foods and women from wearing trousers.”
The stench of
excreta reached my nostrils. I said, “We must ban people from using open areas
as toilets.”
“The
government could,” he said reasonably enough, “but it would be hard to enforce
unless loos are provided.”
I turned
around to see what was happening. Fed
and relieved, the passengers were climbing into the bus, some laggards still
advertising their ‘need’ with the raised ‘pinky’.
Ok, I agreed,
we can’t ban anyone from fertilizing the soil, but we have to discipline them
somehow. Maybe we could ban them from raising the little finger skywards?
Shri Husband
shrugged. Couldn’t make out whether that was in agreement or annoyance.
Feedback:
sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in
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