Rajan Parrikar wrote: > The Western standards of personal hygiene and civic cleanliness are relatively recent. Up until the mid-nineteenth century, Europe was a filthy sty. Personal habits were abysmal - the number of times King Louis XIV bathed in his entire life is said to be less than 10. Ladies thought nothing of relieving themselves publicly at his social functions (if I correctly recall, he once slipped on urine and broke a bone or two). Garbage would be tossed out of windows onto the streets and so on. There are books written on the evolution of Western hygiene and standards of cleanliness. > Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 01:38:43 +0530 From: " Frederick [FN] Noronha * ???????? ???????? " > Rajan lets his 'patriotism' (chauvinism?) get the better of him and ducks the point: "How is it that Indians are so fastidiously clean, but India is so incredibly dirty?" That others bathe less frequently than us is irrelevant... as offtopic as this post :-) --FN > Mario adds: > Wasn't it this same Rajan who has taken legal action to enforce civic cleanliness in Panjim? > Isn't it this same Rajan who with dramatic pictorial evidence is exposing the lack of urban planning in Goa which is destroying what used to be the picturesque Goan landscape? > Isnt't it this same Rajan who asked what the @#$% is wrong with us for allowing such things to happen? > So, then, what are we to make of Rajan's lesson in "Trivial Pursuit" about the lack of European cleanliness hundreds of years ago. Does this have any relevence to either Europe or India in 2008? > I, too, was bemused and puzzled at Rajan's attempt at diverting attention from India and regaling us with questionable anecdotes about public urinating by the ladies in Louis XIV's court. > In India there is a pattern of civic carelessness which does not stop at the obvious lack of respect for public spaces while maintaining a high level of private cleanliness. Sixty years after independance it continues to extend to the callous, often corrupt behavior of so-called "public servants" including bureaucrats and politicians, it extends to the opportunistic attacks on female foreign tourists across India while pretending to hold women in high esteem, and it even extends to the lack of etiquette across India while driving a vehicle on a public thoroughfare. >