Dust Inc.

Before you proceed to read this, I must warn you, that reading this post might literally leave you breathless. However, for your own good, you must fight the urge and continue to breathe, just as you always have...

Every morning on my way to work, I notice an army of sweepers busy pushing aside all the layers of dust on the roads. Go to any developed country, dust is something they seem to have almost eradicated. In India though dust is an industry employing several millions in the form the sweepers, baai's etc. They keep sweeping our streets and our homes to rid of us this dust, which in all probability is the same dust that was forced to reluctantly just leave yesterday. Why can't we seem to get rid of this darn dust! It just seems to be all over the place, all the time!

Now I'd already warned all of you, so brace yourselves. I read somewhere a little while ago, that of the several things that comprise household dust, some very interesting ingredients are human / animal skin, cells, and hair. I'm not sure where I read this, butI did find a reference of the same here.

So, the air that you've been breathing all your life; the air that has miraculously been transporting oxygen to your lungs; air, which is around 25-50% dust, also forces you to breathe in tiny little particles of decayed, defunct, fallen off skin, cells and hair from all over the place.

Now that we know what constitutes our dust, and while our faces turn blue from not wanting to breathe it in anymore, ponder upon this. India is one of the most populated countries of the world and the honour of packing most of that population in minimum amount of space goes to Mumbai. So I think more population equals a more dusty environment.