Pet Pee-ves

My drive to work these days takes me through the busy bylanes of a village called Garbage-palya.

Now, were Garbage-palya a rural settlement in the south of France, it would be a charming little village with cobblestone roads and cottages brimming with bright flowers on the windowsill - the kind of picture postcard place where friendly villagers rode bicycles and waved to passing tourists.

Given its unfortunate location however, Garbage-palya is little better than a slum, with open drains, shabby tenements, and overcrowded streets spilling over with illegal construction, vegetable markets, roaming dogs, naked children, slow-footed cows, manic motorists and deaf pedestrians.

On a main road originally carved out to accommodate ambling cows and flocks of sheep, impatient motorcycles and cars crisscross slow bicyclists as they all lumber over potholes, navigate steep speed bumps and avoid pedestrians who take incessant honking in their stride by simply ignoring the sound.

As I wind my way through the narrow village, I pass by daily fixtures such as the baby buffalo with limpid eyes tied to a street sign; the old vegetable vendor pushing his cart toward the main road; portly stray dogs walking in and out of the butcher shop; shivering chickens huddled together in cages, as though resigned to their fate; and dusky women with plastic buckets beating sudsy clothes against culverts.

As though passing by the butcher shop every day weren’t disturbing enough, I have to endure another sight that makes me want to drive through the village blindfolded. At any given time of day, but most certainly in the mornings, rows of little children squat on the pavement bordering the road to answer nature’s call.

The daily traffic jam on the single arterial road ensures that the stalled vehicles are subject to spiral mounds of human waste in varying shades of yellow and brown that the ladies of the house then push into the open drains bordering the road.

I keep my eyes on the car in front, preferring instead to watch the driver examine the contents of his nose in the rearview mirror. Another ghastly sight will confront me a little ahead. Just before the bylane joins the main road, mingent men will park their vehicles alongside the road and relieve themselves against the shrubbery.

“Why can’t guys control themselves?” I ask my husband, wondering if men are missing a muscle in the perineal area that women automatically have. “It’s so disgusting!”

“Not a big deal,” he shrugs, prompting a quick look of alarm from me as I silently speculate if he’s guilty of a similar transgression or two.

If I were the kind of person to succumb to road rage, I would like to ram my vehicle into these men who calmly whip out their organs in public as though they were flipping open a cell phone. There are times when I'm tempted to honk at them – indiscriminate honking still scoring as the pinnacle of rudeness in my driving manual.

But being female, I exercise admirable restraint, just as I can control my pubococcygeus muscles as needed.

And to think they call women the inferior sex! Harrumph!