Week 14, India is Dirty!

One of the things I really don’t like about India is that everything is dirty and smells bad! People are generally clean and take pride in personal hygiene, but they don’t seem to feel the same about the places where they live and work, and they definitely don’t keep spaces outside clean at all. The interior and exterior of buildings are not maintained and look dirty and run down; this is in the Municipal Corporation in Sangli, and some houses in Mumbai.


It’s not uncommon to see piles of trash at the side of the road. There are occasionally skips/ dumpsters, but they are always overflowing, they smell from a long distance away, and they usually have some stray animal (pigs, dogs, cats, birds, etc) eating out of it. I think the only rubbish bin I’ve seen is one shaped like a penguin at a temple in Solapur. I think his stomach says something like ‘use me’, which we did because we had a small bag of trash that we had been carrying around not wanting to throw it in the street like everyone else does.


The most common smell in India is urine. I think one of the saddest things I experienced was at Ellora and Ajanta Caves, where many of the caves smelled like they were used as toilets; it’s really a shame since there were toilets available at both sites.

The fact that India is so dirty is ironic because everyone has a cleaner. Included in our rent is a cleaner, who is supposed to come in every day and clean the hall, the toilet and the bathroom. I think she sometimes comes in and sweeps the hall, she sometimes soaks the floor of the bathroom, but I don’t think she has ever cleaned the shower. I get the impression that having a cleaner is more of a status symbol than something functional.

We also have a cleaner at work, who smells terrible! She smells like a combination of body odor and the chemicals she uses to clean. She actually comes every day though. She starts by sweeping the whole office. Then she gets a bucket of water with some really bad smelling chemical in it and wipes the whole floor with a dirty rag; I think she just pushes the dirt around with that rag because the floor is no cleaner after she is finished. Then she soaks the floor of the toilet. I don’t understand what they think soaking the floor will accomplish, but both cleaners I’ve met do it. Everyone’s feet are dirty from walking around barefoot, so as soon as we go into the toilet the wet floor becomes a muddy floor. Finally, she does the dishes. I’ve started washing my own tiffin after lunch because when she does it there are always bits of food left and I have to do it again anyway.

I can’t wait to go back home, where the cleaning is done only once a week but it’s done thoroughly, there are trash cans in public places that people use, and where toilets are generally the only acceptable place to urinate. All these things we take for granted.