You know the old nature v/s nurture debate? I always thought
the nature is what you are born with and nurture builds over it. Like the fact
that I have always had my dad’s nose and his toes. Or like the fact that my
handwriting has been like my mother’s forever. But what I didn't know is that
genes can set in late as well. They are funny that way.
So never mind that I never thought of myself as a germ-a-phobe.
And yes I did find it weird that my father imposed a mandatory two minute hand
wash on us for all purposes (All Sabuns are slow. Lifebuoy is lying). It didn't matter. Because a year back, my genes attacked and I ended up with a hopeless
case of germ-o-phobia. Six months back, my germ-o-phobia was only second to Mr
Adrian Monk. It was like being at war. All the time. Do you even know the
number of surfaces you touch that have already been touched by millions before
you? Like the knob to pull down a window in your taxi cab. Or the arm of a seat
in a theatre. Or the keys atop an ATM machine. It’s enough to drive a woman
mad.
And then there is stuff in the air. And the water. And the
food.
And my only savior in this world of pain was Dettol. Dettol
was my shining beacon of liquid light that could swat every nit-picking disgusting
piece of vermin stuck to near about everything. I looked up to Dettol like that squirrel in Ice age 1-4 looks at that nut. And Dettol isn't just an
antiseptic. It is so much more. Do you know you can use it for dandruff? Or
for gargles? Absolutely amazing! And you can dunk an amazing variety of stuff
in it. Toothbrushes, clothes, mugs, buckets, straws, pencils, etc. etc. etc.
You ask me a synonym for versatile and I am most likely to say Dettol (apart
from aloe-vera…that’s a story for another day )
Anyway just as I was about to match Mr Adrian Monk and hole
myself up in a “clean” room (the kind you find in those watch making
factories), something happened. I ended up on the dusty streets of rural India.
On my very first day I gingerly entered one of two “decent”
hotels/PGs available in a town which was a district headquarter but looked more
like a dusty cold village with lots of auto shops. I took a deep breath in (one
of the advantages of rural india, air tends to be rather clean), exhaled and
set about the task of comparing one sub-optimal hotel room with the other
sub-optimal hotel room. The basics couldn't be helped. There was the bed, the
loo (let’s not even talk about it), the dirty jug with the “clean” water, some
neelkamal chairs (seriously you can find those anywhere!) and the overall
dharamshala feel.
I took another deep breath in and ran to the closest
grocery shop.
God bless you, Reckitt Benckiser for your distribution’s reach.Equipped with all my standard cleaning supplies, I finally
chose a hotel with a TV in each room. And so I spent my first few days in
this town in “relative” comfort. Then the actual rural visits started. This is
when things started getting a bit out of hand.
Don’t get me wrong. Villages can be wonderful. Except when you
are doing a project on organic manure and pesticides. You see things tend to
get a bit, well, organic.
So I started with a thorough after-village-clean-up routine.
And I resorted to dunking everything in Dettol. Except food which was a bummer.
And slowly as I tried to clean everything up, nurture raised its ugly head. It
paired up with that other trait it had planted in me – laziness and slowly set
on its work to overcome my genetic predisposition to cleanliness. You know the
story of that man who literally chipped off a mountain to make a tunnel?
Laziness tends to work more like dynamite and this machine when it comes to
chipping off my clean up routine.
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Every day I learned to care a little bit less. I would want
to report that this was rather tough but regrettably the word “lazy” describes
me considerably more than “germ freak”. (check out the aint-no-transformer-better-than-me, Bagger 288 above for
further proof).
And so here we are today. My monthly consumption of Dettol
products is down by a regrettable 80%.
Nurture 1 Nature 0
