Those who dare to go for morning walks along Chennai's roads would have witnessed a habit that would bring shame to any city. It is the sight of men, women and children squatting along the roadsides to defecate. This is true of almost every area, except may be those around VIP's houses. The first day I decided to improve my health with a morning walk, I woke late. It was 7.30 am, but remembering the adage "better late than never", I stepped out onto the road with enthusiasm. As advised by my doctor, I took a deep breath of the 'pure air' - and almost threw up. The air was anything but pure.

I walked on realizing that friends from the adjoining slums, squatting at ease and in no apparent hurry along the sides of every road in the locality, were the ones responsible for the heavily loaded atmosphere. I had always heard that such people carry small pitchers of water to clean themselves later. But there was nary a sign of any such pitchers. In fact, one of the girls, who would be in her teens, was carrying a comb and actually combing her hair while doing her job. Diligent time-saver.

The scene haunted me for the rest of the day. The next morning, I tried another neighborhood for my walk - this time, the posh Alwarpet area. Here, it was friends from nearby Ganesapuram, who, like me, are probably late risers, for they were there on the roadsides well into the morning. Curiously, there was this 'Corporation Pay and Use Toilet' just round the corner, that looked deserted. That a famous Dhaba, where you need to wait at least half an hour to get a table even on weekdays, was just a stone's throw away added to the piquancy of the situation. 

It is not that Chennai lacks public conveniences around slums. But are they always functional and enough in number? What is even more pertinent is creating an awareness and civic sense in these people. When many of them could spend Rs.30/- per head on their frequent visits to the cinema theatre, pooling money among themselves to build public conveniences for their own streets, if not for individual houses,  should not be too much of a burden. Awareness and motivation, coupled with stringent action against those found dirtying the roads would go a long way in making Chennai cleaner and healthier. 

May be it will help if the Mayor and Corporation officials take their morning walks around different areas of Chennai each day and do so without any prior information or fanfare. We could do well with leaders, who are sensitive enough to wake up to the tragedy of civilized human beings behaving like animals without any sense of civic responsibility.