Hello everyone, so we got three of the big Indian lockdown and heading towards the fourth one due to the Coronavirus crisis. Though it feels OK to be home, but most of would want to go back to outdoors and believe me, this is not going to be easy. Since this disease is going to stay for years to come and we need to learn to live with it. This has become essential that we have to make some necessary changes to our lifestyles. Most of these changes are going to be the sanitation and personal hygiene related.
We have been hearing that India is a dirty country and whenever we hear that we think of lot of trash out in the streets and bacteria, pollution and dust. However we the Indian people knew so well how to take care of hygiene. We have been doing basic hygiene so predominantly but we never thought of them being so effective for fighting pandemic. Slowly slowly we might have forgotten them as well. Now this is the time to go back to those Indian hygiene habits.
I'm going to tell you the 7 ways he you should start practicing immediately. We all know of these habits as we have been doing them traditionally, but now it's time to get them back in our lifestyle.
1. Washing hands and feet often
We Indian people tend to think everything and everyone is dirty and we do a lot of thing just using our hands. Like when we fix things or make things we use their hands. When we go to toilet, we clean with left hand. Also when they we cook we use our hands and when we eat we wash our hands. So obviously and especially we really have to have clean hands and that's why we keep washing your hands regularly throughout the day.
Earlier Indian have this ha bit of washing hands embedded in our daily lives, even when you go out and come back you wash your hands. Before you start cooking, eating you wash your hands. No to mention after the toilets always always wash your hands. I think the most important thing about maintaining good hygiene. Nowadays we tend to use our hands less and use lots of tissues everywhere. Even in kitchen, we have all these different kinds of utensils to touch things, when we're eating we have forks and whatever so I think that that has kind of taken us further away from the sensation of our hands. So we don't wash them regularly anymore.
Even if you dig a bit into old traditions, we have had this habit of washing hands and feet before entering the house both when coming from outside. You can also see this tradition of providing water outside house to our guest before they come inside. There is no harm getting back washing your hands and feet and making it a habit again.
2. Indian Style Toilets
The Indian toilets, by which I mean the squats toilets. Let's agree that western toilets are way more comfortable. We actually prefer to more of western toilets whenever we are home. Just because we know it's hygienic and we ourselves has keep them clean. But indian squats toilets are way more hygienic. So when you're traveling or some other place, you have to use the shared toilet space, prefer to use Indian style toilets. It's doesn't let your butt to touch the dirty space.
Also one more thing about the Indian toilet is that it uses water. It's just more hygienic than to use the toilet paper. Also think of resources you waste in making those papers meant to be use just once. Think of how horrible it would be think of you being out of toilet paper in such critical situation and you are not habitual to use water to clean yourself up. In India we traditionally habituated to use a mug and hand to clean, it's time to go back to the old habit and save the resources from being wasted.
3. Hankerchiefs
In India we don't have a tissue culture. We always been taught to use hankys in schools and in families. Here we do a lot of things using our hands, you could be running nose or could be having sweat under your face. So you have been always asked to carry your hankerchief to address these day to day issues. Also just to mention that we Indian people do not blow our nose in public, it's always been labelled unhygienic.
We slowly slowly cities have started to adapt the western style of using one time tissues to fix these issues. But believe me we should always use a fresh hankerchief everyday for our personal hygiene.
4. Taking Shower Everyday (often) and Change of clothes
We actually have this habit of taking showers daily, many in western countries might not doing it. This actually we are a tropical country and we sweat a lot. We basically consider ourselves becoming dirty if we venture outside and consider everything outside of home dirty. This has been imbibed in our mind since childhood and let me tell you, this is most apt thing. We might not have pressing this hard as our ancestors used to do it. We have not only showering everyday, but also invented many bath accessories, e.g. we invented Ayurvedic Scrubs, Shampoos, soaps etc and have tradition of using it daily.
Change of clothes
Traditionally we have this habit of keeping clothes separate. clothes to wear daily inside house and clothes to wear outside house. Traditionally the clothes to wear inside the house are washed daily. We might not be washing clothes everyday, but at least wash them once in two days. I remember how my grandmother used to scold us if we keep wearing the school clothes inside the house. Once we are inside, we must change to the pair of clothes to wear inside the house.
I also remember my mom said, they have this habit of keeping the outside clothes separate and not to mix with clean clothes.
5. Keep the footwear out
We Indian have this habit of keeping the shoes out by the door before entering into the house. This is quite a habit of almost all the Asian countries. You do not step into the house while you are coming from outside. Obviously you are bringing to much of dirt and bacteria into the house. This will result that you need to clean the house more than you already do, which is a big task.
6. Cleaning the house daily
Nowadays we live in high rise buildings and windows are replaced by glass walls. Like in west, we don't think of cleaning our house daily. But this is not the case in most of the country yet. Still in India you need to clean your house daily. It's off course you don't have the glass windows in most of the houses in India, but also we like to keep our airy. Relying less on the AC and thriving more on fresh air is the key in traditional Indian way of living. So we will have dust coming in, people coming in the houses and traffic outside brings more dirt than a glass house.
This is also completely unacceptable in traditional Indian house where you have small worship place (Pooja room). Remember your elderly asking you to clean your house daily twice a day. One in the morning before you take shower and perform Pooja and evening before sunsets and you light a diya before god. Now it is important to keep our house clean on regular basis.
You always keep your house clean because there is a temple.You always keep yourself clean because your body is a temple too.
7. Drinking water from vessel by not touching your lips.
It is one of the weirdest Indian habit that we Indian do follow for sure. We habitually do not touch our lips to glass or water vessels. Traditionally it is assumed a bad habit to share the glass which you sip the water with other person. If at all we have to share the glass or vessel or bottle, we drink water without touching our lips to it. We just straight pour water into our mouth and gulp it.
We also have habit of not using shared glass at common places like office, canteen etc. This is a very hygienic habit as we insure that we are exchanging saliva with other person.
So these are the top 7 very Indian hygiene habits we need to practice again. Let's start over them again!
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