Hassling Habits Die Hard

Because civility is tough.

- Maharaja K. Koul

We’re fat. We smoke. We spit. Drink too much. Defecate in the open. Don’t exercise enough. We’re short-tempered. We’re ill-mannered. And our stress levels are off the charts.

We’re killing ourselves, and we know it. And yet we carry on – overeating, lighting up, urinating seeing a wall, rush to the fields or the railway tracks with a lota, slumping in front of the TV, jumping queues, jostling to catch public transportinspiring some of the greatest thinkers in the words of genomics, neuroscience, biochemistry and evolutionary psychology to pander the most puzzling question: why is it so hard for people to change?

Parents try to instill in us the virtues of being well-mannered right from our early days. Why else do you think we’re all toilet-trained? What then induces us to grow up and pee on the first available public wall? What makes us pick our teeth in public, slurp or belch during and after meals, walk in a group abreast on the sidewalk, tread on grass in parks or not allow the other persons to have complete sentence?

So…. err, what makes us breach the code of civility or forget social courtesies? Every handbook worth the printer’s ink or every agony aunt worth her advice would ascribe sidetracked conduct to cultural mores, states of morality or simply, eccentricity.

Of course, all good manners must start at home. If Mr Chatterjee walks across to the balcony of his secondfloor flat to spit out a jet of