When I see so many bottles of hand sanitizers, I start getting uncomfortable. I have never used them myself, but now they are ubiquitous, people offer you a squirt in the lift, I’m given some at the entrance to our apartment complex, I’m forced to take a little before I enter a shop. I now have a bottle myself.
Before the pandemic, I thought that these hand sanitizers were actually harmful because all those chemicals in them will end up in our water and soil and enter our food chain, killing many useful organisms on the way. Little like shooting ourselves on the foot, really.
Of course today it would be totally wrong to say this and I would be quartered and drawn before I finish writing this. But, really, isn’t the reason we are in this mess, our obsession with being ‘clean’?
I'm trying to think back on when this obsession with clean started in India. In post-liberalised India in the early 1980s, we first encountered cutlery packed in plastic. This was seen as progress, as it meant the cutlery was really clean. Reusable syringes had given way to single use syringes and this made a big difference to health care in India. But unfortunately we applied this same principle to cutlery, and soon single-use plastic cutlery was seen as more healthy and desirable. Chips were advertised as ‘untouched by human hand’ and even today there is a brand of bottled water that does the same.
How did we so quickly forget our past when the hand-made was so valued?
The lure of ‘clean’ meant that we wanted everything to be packed 3 times over, even fruit. We use so many products to clean our homes, clothes and bodies that our lakes, rivers and oceans are dirty and dying. Our landscapes are dotted with flying scraps of plastic wrapping and flags of multicoloured discarded clothing. Our fish and cows and goats are merrily eating these and are becoming sick. Oh yes, we are so clean.
Everything comes in smaller and smaller packets – biscuits come in packs of two, inside larger packs of ten, inside larger packs of thirty etc. They are certainly fresh and clean and we don’t need to put them into another dabba. Why should we wash extra vessels?
I worry about all this hand sanitizer now. Tons and tons of it flowing into the water bodies, into fish, into fields, into fruit and vegetables, into the market and finally into us. Please be sure to wash all the vegetables you buy with strong disinfectant.
I say, dirt is good, dirt is honest. We can see it. Clean is more deceptive. We first have to understand what is clean, does my being clean mean other beings have to deal with my dirt, is my cleanliness dirtying the air and water for me and others? It's complicated, I don’t want to catch a virus and die. But I don’t want to disinfect the whole world and kill all micro-organisms either.
Maybe we should all stop being so fearful and wallow a little in the dirt, realise its not so bad, build some immunity, grow stronger and clean the world, instead of only our hands.
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