Don't commit nuisance: the message painted on the city walls intrigued me when I was a child. 'Nuisance', I remember finding out in the dictionary, meant various things: annoyance, bother and trouble among others. So what exactly did this message refer to? If one chose to 'commit nuisance', could it be prevented by a message on a wall?
The realisation dawned on me only much later. This particular use of 'nuisance' will not be found in any dictionary of the English language. It is, rather, an excellent instance of a uniquely Indian usage, referring as it does to a characteristic of Indian males that the wordsmiths of English dictionaries have yet to discover.
This unwritten definition of 'nuisance' is what could be called the Indian male's 'front to the wall' syndrome. That this syndrome is rampant is evident across India, but most particularly and prominently in towns and cities, because this is where most of the walls are to be found. A line of males will stand with their fronts to the wall, and proceed to display the highest degree of civic sense. The entire other half of the species may well scream Nuisance! at such an idea, but who's listening?
And whoever thought that a Don't commit nuisance message on the wall in question would stop such behaviour must have been a diehard optimist. I say this not because I don't think people (men, that is) would listen, but because they probably would not understand. Even if I were among the fraction of India's population that reads English, has access to a dictionary, and, moreover, has the inclination to refer to the dictionary, I would have no idea, as I faced the wall, what it was that I was supposed to not commit. 'Nuisance' was something committed by one who stops traffic, throws a stone at a bus or eve-teases a girl walking by. I would only be relieving myself – and what harm can that cause anybody?