Warning: Stains are hazardous to nation's image

Snakes and slums have not caused as much damage to India’s reputation as the paan and gutkha stains left behind by labourers at the Games Village.
Thanks to the tell-tale stains on the walls and floors at the Commonwealth Games Village, paan and gutka are in the news. Nothing new, really. But after the damage good old betel leaf and little saches containing tobacco and arecanut have done to the country’s image, it is time something drastic was done about it.Our reputation for cleanliness and hygiene is in the mud, or rather in our own reddish-brown spittle.
Those stains on the walls, floors and bathrooms of the CWG Village were left there by poorly-paid labour who think little of spending Rs 30-35 of their hard-earned pittance of a daily wage on popping gutka into their mouths five or six times a day. How do you expect the poor chaps to desist from doing so when they watch TV ads luring them into the habit day in and day out, with not even a hint of a warning about its hazards?
Even a minister has been seen spitting during interviews on camera. The reader must have guessed who. You can’t retain a mouthful of spittle and speak at the same time, can you?
Even the old trick of placing sacred images of holy men and bhagwans in staircase landings and other vulnerable corners of expensive modern buildings has not quite succeeded, as we all know. The CWG Village is the latest high-profile casualty.
Yours truly has actually been witness to hockey players and umpires emptying their mouth of red saliva on the sidelines before taking the field. He also knows of cricketers standing in the slips sharing zarda with umpires between overs. Straying a bit from the subject of paan-gutka, what is a pinch of zarda compared to the chewing a filthy cricket ball by a cricket captain?
Back to the by now much-maligned paan. However deep its roots in our subcontinental culture, however much it may be celebrated in popular lyrics like ‘paan khae saiyaan hamaar’ and ‘khai ke paan banaras wala’, it is plain bad manners to be munching the leaf and sometimes spraying the red fluid on other people’s clothes.
Welcome as TV campaigns are, especially like the one featuring Aamir Khan in which a man is shown shaming the nation by squirting out paan juice on the road, why not also enact municipal laws against the practice even if it will cost some people votes? Till then get our compulsive paan chewers to carry their garbage bins.
Even snakes have not caused as much damage to our reputation as sporting hosts as the wanton spitting at the much-vaunted CWG Village has. The effects of the stains on its walls, floors and bathrooms will be felt long after they are scrubbed out by the cleaners.