Enough is enough

Reading a story of how an American firm spent time and money on tracking down a dhobi in Delhi reminded me of the gulf separating us. The American company had used a shot of the dhobi in an advertisement, and had wanted to pay him. It took two years of searching the back alleys of Delhi to enable them to hand over the Rs 19,000 to him. Many years ago, a friend in an ad agency, the most famous one then going in Mumbai, used a shot of my elder son in a chocolate drink campaign. After the many sessions were over she took out Rs 25 from her bag and said, “Here buy him some sweets.” No mention of a fee had been made, but when I told another friend in advertising about the chocolate money and the remark that, “We don’t pay children,” she said that this was nonsense. On confronting the first one with this, she rather sourly said that I could come and collect it from the office in Churchgate – and she was a friend of many years!

I believe that the Japanese are probably the most civic-conscious people in the world. We must be amongst the worst offenders. How many people do you see coughing and sneezing without the slightest attempt to cover their face!

My husband tells of how he was walking with his English hostess in rather a lovely park in Harrogate in Yorkshire. He, like most of us would have done, chose to walk on the grass instead of the pathway. He was politely told of the correct form. “Why on earth not?” he asked. “Because the grass is so lovely; we must help keep it so.”

On another occasion, sailing off the coast of Nova Scotia he tossed an empty beer can into the sea. The three or four Canadians said nothing, but one of them pointedly put his own can into a garbage bag which was taken ashore on landing.

In our very own Fatima Nagar, there are two short stretches of pavements, very narrow, but there to be used. Do you think they are? Think again.Buying a papaya one morning in our one and only fruit shop, Dutta offered me a plastic bag which I declined. He asked why, and proceeded to answer the question himself. And last week at the bakery next to the fruit shop a small girl asked for a bag for the broom which had been wrapped in paper anyway. I regret to say the owner gave her one.I could go on, but enough is enough.