Friday, July 24

The humanity of chewing gum.


Image result for chewing gum on footwear



I have been walking with chewing gum stuck to the soles of my footwear for four days now. The damn thing just refuses to come off and I have tried everything from scraping it against a wall to soaking my beloved flip-flops in hot water.

We humans have so many issues to discuss, crimes to judge and people to kill that the little things escape our attention. When is the last time you thought of keeping a respectable amount of space between you and the person in front of you in a queue? I know ‘respectable’ is an opinion, but somehow most of us prefer to have ourselves breathing down someone’s neck.

I guess it is because some of us also have the habit of butting into whatever little space visible to us and ‘adjusting’ into it even if it meant displacing everyone around for a mile. For a long time, I thought that it is because the world is fast and time is money and blah blah…but now I see that it is plain bad habit.

When I was returning home from office yesterday evening, I realized that it wouldn’t make any damn difference to a single passenger if the motorman never gives a signal before the train leaves the platform. The moment the train reached the next station, almost everyone around me shot up from their places pushing each other just as ready as the Indian National Army at war.

Getting back to the gum under my feet, there’s a reason you have wrappers (except for you to litter), tissues and if they suit your fancy, even leaves. Once you are done chewing, just wrap the goddamn thing before disposing it instead of spitting it out for it to wait to annoy someone else. Remind me to start a petition on this.

We talk about humanity, terrorism and women empowerment, but who will preach that we should not sneeze without covering our nose?