In praise of Appi

Without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely, that man was created in God’s image. Either/or: either man was created in God’s image — and God has intestines — or God lacks intestines and man is not like him…” Shit is a more onerous problem than evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man’s crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man.- Milan Kundera

Bombay and her people are used to a lot of things that people outside it may find weird. I mean, where else would you see people use cutting chai as a dip for French fries or refuse to step out of their homes at the first sign of monsoon or brag about the bargaining process involved in their buying a factory reject of a branded bag from Colaba Causeway?

If you ask my godfather, who by the way is a big cynic, he’ll define Bombay in two words- shit hole, literally! Having lived in Bombay since the moment he was born I can only imagine what the poor man goes through when he compares the Bombay of his childhood to the Mumbai it has become now. Anyway, this is totally not what I wanted to talk about. The Bombay I know has always been kind to me, teaching me hard lessons the subtle way, so you can imagine why I’m in love with Bombay and probably will always be. So much so that when people tell me that Bombay’s dirty I think they are seeing things because I have never thought the same of this place. No, it is not a matter of me being so used to the muck here that it does not seem dirty to me anymore. I just have never felt that this place is dirty since the day I stepped here. Nevertheless, this is a sorry yet light tale of how this dirt, after almost six years of humble existence in the city, got the better of me.

After a really long day in the University that included three consecutive 2 hour-sessions with no lunch break, my friends Candice, Harsha and I were walking to the railway station relieved that we could finally go home and sleep. Now, I, owing to my mild OCD (or that’s what they say) walk with my eyes on the floor, especially if it has a pattern. You know, just so that I step on the right tiles while I am walking. I could have got too engrossed in what we were talking about because that day I did not pay attention to the yellow tiles between the red ones I was accidentally stepping on and before I knew it my foot was in a pile of shit. My immediate response was to laugh like a blanked out idiot but good sense kicked in just when these two turned back to see why I had stopped.

Yes, it was human shit if you were wondering and thankfully it was not warm but I’m pretty sure it belonged to a vegetarian or someone who hadn’t had non-vegetarian food in some time. You see, being pretty obsessed with shit (not just me but all my cousins), helps me make out the kind of diet a person is on by the quality of their shit. I stood there motionless unable to believe this had happened to me while Candice and Harsha giggled away to glory until I had to tell them to bugger off and get me a bottle of water. The next three minutes were quite humiliating with people walking by and smirking at my soiled foot that I had unassumingly kept at a safe distance from me- as much as I could. When I looked down at my poor foot to see how it was faring I got further befuddled at the sight of pear-sized flies fighting over shit- on my foot. That is when I started trying to rub my foot on every little mount of mud I could find on the generally clean footpath. Despite all that and the water treatment that soon followed, the yellow sunshine managed to shine forth from the minute striations of my floaters.

Appi (the Malayalam word for shit) is probably my area of prime interest. In fact Appi is my favourite expression. You may easily catch me saying it once every 3-4 minutes. According to inspirational speakers like Rhonda Byrne, Mike Dooley, etc., the idea that your mind conceives and manifests in thoughts and deeds is what you will ultimately get. I am assuming that by introducing Appi into my normal day vocabulary and reading the theodicy of it by the literary gem Milan Kundera it is I who ‘summoned’ Appi into my life.

As I sat next to Candice in the train I found myself amused and strangely proud of the fact that I had finally had a physical experience of Appi that did not belong to me or to a baby. Strange but I guess that’s what the city does to you- value even the absurdest of experiences and make you feel better for having had such an experience in the first place. As for me, yet another lesson I learnt tells me that Potty potty pe likha hai kuchalne wale ka naam. J