The nation lying between 24 and 37 degee Latitude, amid the Korakoram mountains and the Arabian sea has grossly erred in the selection of its national symbol. It should have been more appropriately a spittoon. A nation that spits out over a million litres of saliva rivalling the yearly rain fall of Sindh, every day on the streets and side walks must make it the best pastime of a nation lost in the oblivion of etiquette.

Spitting is an act that has long attracted writers to its emotional and cultural value.

Shakespeare writes in Othello (iv. i. 73):
If I dare eat, or drink, or breathe, or live,
I dare meet Surrey in a wilderness,
And spit upon him, whilst he lies,
And lies, and lies.

The Fifth Arit in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, says: "I have driven back Aapep for thee. I have spit upon the wounds in his body."

In the Noris (German and Scandinavian) mythology, the truce among the gods is celebrated by a meeting at which all the gods spit into a bowl, creating a giant called Kvasir, who is the sign of peace and harmony among the deities. Kvasir is later sacrificed and from his blood a more potent drink for the gods is made that inebriates deities and gives inspiration to the poets.

Boris Vivian, an iconoclastic French novelist wrote in 1946, a parody of American hard-boiled detective fiction, I'll Spit on Your Graves, that caused such scandal primarily because of the title that it was banned.

In our culture, spit and spitting have varied meanings. There are nineteen idioms listed in the Urdu Lughat (Urdu Dictionary Board) relating to spit, ranging from licking own spitting to applying spit (meaning to cheat) to spitting anger. In the Drama of Raonaq (1883), the poet says,

Jao seedhay es jahan say aey khameida qud shitab
Thook daen gay warna munh per aap kay es aan ham.
In Shaour (Noorul-lughaat, 1893).
Sheeren labown key baat ko mutliq nahin sabaat
Such haey kay chaat-tey hain yeh bud ahad thook kay.

There is no greater agreement among the world literature, across cultures, than on the meaning and the nuances attached to spit and spitting. It is simply considered bad and derogatory, regardless.

Let us look at why people spit. First, the salivary secretions help in the digestion of food but the phlegm that comes from lungs is a way to expel the intruding contaminants entering the lungs. The environment in which we breathe can easily irritate our lungs and create phlegm. In chest infections of all sorts, bacteria are thrown out of body through phlegm. So, it is usual that at any given time, millions of Pakistanis will have the urge to spit saliva or phlegm; let us blame our environmental pollution for that. Those who suffer from lung diseases make up the rest of the expectorating mortals. Now comes a different category of people, a large segment of our population which chews tobacco (niswar) or beetle (pan) and there is a profuse secretion of saliva that somehow must be gotten rid of. This habit is not entirely indigenous to our part of the world. The tobacco chewing cowboys and baseball players are often the idols of many American teenagers. It is common in many rodeo competitions to have spitting contests, who can spit the farthest; this often goes with hot chilli eating contests so common in the southern states of the USA. So well ingrained is the habit of spitting after chewing tobacco in the games of baseball that now there are is a chewing gum in the shape of chewing tobacco for children to emulate their baseball heroes with a pouch in their cheek. The habit of chewing tobacco came to necessity because the pitchers had to lubricate the balls before they could give it a curved pitch.

This still leaves yet another category of spitters that neither suffer from disease nor chew any thing (a clear minority) yet spit suddenly and continuously. This species of people is often found waiting for their buses to arrive or happen to be just bystanders enjoying the many hilarious moments of life like traffic accidents, street fights, cockfights, and like. They spit only because they are totally bored when they get done with doing other unspeakable acts with their other body parts, there is nothing else left to do. They spit. It is a habit.

Now we turn to the art of spitting. The mogul tradition required carrying of a spittoon that was quite eloquently carried into the cultures of Lucknow and Delhi. It was unthinkable to leave home without the spittoon. (The cliché started by American Express, "Don't Leave Home Without It," has it roots in the mogul culture.) Many spittoons of the mogul era were carved out of precious metals. Before spitting, it was customary to hide the travel of sputum with hands arched and the spittoon slid under the table or out of sight. Of course, it was regularly replaced with a fresh spittoon like the ashtrays of today. Spitting on the public roads and where people can see was considered an ultimate act of breaching civility. But all these traditions went into oblivion with the coming of the new generation. The ME generation. Totally oblivious of the crudeness of their act, they began spitting wherever they could. And soon it became lesser of an evil. Soon it was free for all.

It is a common sight today, and you can not avoid it, that people standing by the roadside suddenly fire flying oral missiles with great precision. A wall or a kitty corner creates an irresistible urge, not unlike that of a dog seeing a fire hydrant, to spit. If you ever climb a few flights of stairs in a pubic building, here is a piece of cultural shock you should be prepared to face. Every turn of stairs will be fully and adequately marked with about a thousand shades of spit in an abstract form centring dead right in the middle of the corner. Such precision in aim should earn us great laurels. The abstract art created is often distracting only because of some novice firing in the wrong direction.

The impact of spitting is another reason why some people may want to spit. It clearly mars the surroundings and the graffiti speaks louder than the apparently benign act. People may find this as a statement, an outlet of their pent-up frustrations. By destroying the serenity of their surroundings, they prove to themselves that they still have some sort of control over their lives and the world around them. Perhaps they want to say how much they think of the community they are live in. They are screaming, "We don't give a damn." They are the people who are very unhappy and you can hardly blame them. In a town where suffering is a daily routine, many of these spitters have very little to look forward to; they get bored, disgruntled and vicious and then when it becomes too much to hold, they spit. You can not expect them to be environment friendly. They are just not friendly. Period.

Whereas much can be said about the medical hazards of these habits, it is sufficient to add that like cigarette smokers who have no right to pollute the air for nonsmokers, pan and tobacco chewers have no right to expose us to their oral excrement. Spitting does more than to mar the beauty of walls. It spreads disease. Some very dread diseases like TB. Yes, the most important source of respiratory disease spread is the spit. The bacteria in saliva encrust themselves as spores and survive the heat of the street. Mixed with dirt, they begin flying in the air waiting for the next innocent Muslim to attack with ruthlessness. The diseases spread swiftly. This is the main reason why spitting is considered the ultimate act of despicableness.

What are the solutions? I think we will fail miserably if we try to exploit the human element of etiquette. We are frankly, quite shameless and thick skinned people. We can however, use religion to explain to people that is against the dictum of huqooq ul abad to spit on the roadside and in this vein, the clergy can help. The line about health hazards should have some appeal also. Spread of TB is certainly a dread situation and given the stigma attached to the disease, I think we can begin a campaign against spitting. Spitting spreads TB should be the slogan of hoarding all over.

The KMC should provide spittoons all over town because unless there is an outlet to expunge the irresistible urge to spit, people will forget all reasons to act civilized just like they would find it all right to urinate right in front of the sign admonishing them not to do so. It is interesting to know that whereas most of spitters are ruthless, they are also chickens. A curious situation arose about ten years ago when a new hospital opened its shiny doors to the public. Extremely worried about the menace of spitting, they placed mops and buckets all over the hospitals requesting people to clean their own acts. Even to this date, you rarely find an act or two in the entire facility. Why? It is because people are generally reluctant to be the first one to start the trail. They would generally not spit on a clean floor. But give them a slight scratch and they will flood it instantly.

We should also remove all signs warning against spitting. It simply reminds them of their habit. We may also try the trick that there is a lesson to be learned from the animal kingdom. Animals do not spit. Cats even hide their faeces. It seems that Nature has inculcated in living beings a sense of civility that protects the species and augments their survival. Why are we hell bent on destroying ourselves?

(This article was written at the behest of my friend Dr. Arshad Ahmed, who is very upset with the telephone department employees. His wife visited the new customer service centre on Sharae Faisal last week. The office has the modern look with shining granite and she was impressed. The clerk at the desk asked her to be excused. He turned around, opened the door behind him to a shining white tiled bathroom and regurgitated his entire mouthful of pan on the floor and shut the door. Wiping his mouth with his dirty sleeve, he smiled, "Can I help you.")