I often wonder, at this great Indian obsession,

To dispose outside, of your body’s salivary secretion,

They call it, the formidable Mr Spit,

But showing him the door, is a crime most commit.

Often in this spot, you’d yourself find,

On a pleasant evening walk that you twined,

Blissfully unaware of the peripheral view,

When suddenly out of the blue,

A gurgling sound breaks your daydream,

From a walker churning up a frothy stream.

It splashes and it sloshes and it bubbles inside,

Till it erupts and gushes out between his teeth, like a landslide,

And with a vengeance, from the mouth, it darts through,

When you hear the relieved, satisfied grunt of an Aak Thoo!

It could be a tepid gurgly gargle,

A meek croak, a feeble throat curdle,

Or a superficial rinse and swish around,

The crevices of your mouth and outward bound.

A bitter rejection of the nasty medicine forcibly fed,

Or the digestive remains of a paan in scarlet red,

A mode of exchange in a heated parley,

And also the product of an acid reflux gnarly.

Occasionally into a form sinister, it may spin,

Arising from the bronchioles deep within,

Spiralling its way upwards and out,

Collecting phlegm all the way to the spout,

Steadily reaching the cavernous throat,

Gathering force as it stays afloat,

Until it can choke the drains no more,

And charges into the mouth like a wild boar,

Swirling a whirlpool and a vicious circle,

As it finally bursts from the oral portal.

Striving hard, for one noble purpose,

To find its way north, out of the corpus,

Onto a pavement or a park or a wall,

Or out of a moving car in a waterfall,

Although that is a hard task to do, with the wind moving,

Splattering it back on the face, with a look disapproving.

Why do people do it, I wonder often,

And these excuses, may critics soften,

For spitting the almighty Mr Spit,

Is as essential as cleaning the arm pit.

A means to throw it out of the system,

Like piss or poo and a daily custom,

And just as you’d squat out a faecal constipation,

It is inexcusable, not to strain out a spit from its gestation.

Is it illusioned to be an attractive trait,

A sign of manhood or a date bait,

Probably it is an urge elementary,

And one couldn’t care less, about the hoighty toighty gentry,

Or that the trip to the bathroom, is too much of an exercise,

And swallowing your spit, is a hard task likewise.

Perhaps it is as important as speaking,

Or as subconscious as sleeping, sneezing or breathing,

And a little spit here and a little spat there,

Is hardly a reason to stare and sulk and swear.

Spitting is an art, that requires practice and dedication,

A science, that merits recognition and citation.

For it requires an expert, to know the right inward pressure,

To squeeze the spit out from the chest, in the correct measure,

And to understand the dynamics, trajectory, torque and force,

To hurl it rightfully, in its designated geometric course.

So continues the tale of Mr Spit and Mrs Spat,

Locked eternally with man, in a mouth-to-ground combat.

Who in their rightful mind would dread,

And the dangerous road to the loo tread,

For a task so little,

Just to spray the spittle,

When such an easy and natural alternative exists,

And only a little cockiness and some chutzpah it consists.