Fighting Shit

Everybody needs to use the toilet. Every day. But in India, we exaggerate it. By doing so we do not give it importance; we merely magnify it in the lab under a microscope. More appropriately, we bring awareness to people who probably have a bidet, use perfumed toilet paper, and have a warm jet of water to clean up with.

National award-winning actress Vidya Balan is now the brand ambassador for the sanitation drive. This is the brainwave of Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh, who said:

"It is going to be a two year programme. She's had a dirty picture in reel life, but this will be a clean picture in real life. I think she will help in making sanitation a national obsession."

This is a silly comment, the transposition of dirty and clean. It is also a cheap gimmick. Ms.Balan’s giggle act and repetitious references to the film was bad enough, now a central minister wants to ride on it. There are people who have to shit in the open, in fields, in dug-up holes, and sewage even from hotels near water sources floats into our rivers and seas. Those people would have liked to have such facilities long ago. What does the minister mean by saying she will make it into a national obsession? The film became a publicity-geared obsession only for those involved. The others bought tickets, whistled, got off and moved on.

Using public facilities is a basic need. What is obsessive about it?

For Vidya Balan it is just one more satellite benefit for The Dirty Picture. She does not have to say it. Instead, the words are typically managed:

“It's an honour for me to be the brand ambassador for the sanitation drive and like Mr Ramesh just said, it needs to become a national obsession and I am going to do everything in my capacity to make sure that the message is taken across to every person.”

What will the ads tell people living in slums or in the interiors? It is the job of the government to provide public toilets and ensure that women do not have to hide their faces behind umbrellas as they sit alongside drains on roads to empty their bowels. Have you seen such scenes? Do you know how heartbreaking it is? Do you know how young women have to take someone along because there are predators waiting? Do you know that many cannot afford even the two rupees to use the public loos? Do you know that the cloth they use during their periods has to be washed in dirty water because there isn’t enough of it? Do you know that they stand for hours to fill buckets to use the water for drinking and cooking and recycle what is left? Do you know that children squat for hours only to see their malnourished droppings taken over by flies?

We look away, hold up our noses. Vidya Balan is doing it out of “conviction”, she says. Every Indian she reaches out to will remember her as she lectures on sanitation. They will probably have an inauguration in some cleaned up poor locality. After that, there will be clips on what to do and how to keep your environment free of disease on television.

The municipalities and panchayats should be regularly visiting these places. They ought to involve key workers from those areas, people who belong there, have suffered. I know that with Ms. Balan it is possible to get some industrial houses to shell out money. Yet, it won’t really reach out unless the infrastructure is in place.

I am waiting for someone to compare her to Mahatma Gandhi the minute she holds up a broom in her hand. It’s been over six decades when he started it. Has it made any difference? It did not then. It will not now. Except to honour the celebrities for their sanitised concern and conviction.

Never bog-ged down

I just love this…flowers and ribbons to inaugurate a toilet. Only in India. Thane got its first electronic automatic public toilet (e-toilet) with computerised flushing, electricity, and water storage capacity in a 45 sg ft area.

I do not know if there is any special e-facility to figure out what to do when some of us squat atop the pot rather than sit on it. For a two-rupee coin, it could become a bit of a curiosity, and wonder whether there is a time limit, for each time that there is a heave-ho, there could then be a lot of water and power wastage.

But you bet, if you go by this picture, wherever we Indians are we come out smelling of roses. 

Advani, a Weak PM, and Incontinence

I think our Prime Minister is not weak; he knows his so-called weakness works in his favour. Therefore, L.K.Advani may be sighing with Hissar relief after the Yeddy-made problem, but it is a bit too pat and he ends up boosting the real weaklings/seeklings:

“We have had Prime Ministers like Chandra Shekhar, Deve Gowda and IK Gujral who may not have even ten-fifteen MPs but who never appeared weak as there is a lot of strength in the position of Prime Minister.”

Exactly. There is strength in the position, not necessarily the person. What did these three really contribute?

"The condition of the government is very bad. Sometimes I take pity at Manmohan Singh though I had respect for him at one time. When I criticised him by calling him 'weak' before the 2009 elections people asked me why I said that because he was a good and honest man. Calling him weak is not an abuse. But if the Prime Minister thinks that he cannot do anything till 10 Janpath does not give me clearance, it does not behove him.”

A few points:

1. Does he mean to say that since “weak” is not an abuse, he is by default an honest man? 
2. If he does need “clearance” from 10 Janpath, then why target him at all and not the person at 10 Janpath? He has been going on tours, attending summits and signing documents. Why not make him responsible for all of this?
3. Finally, since when has the BJP encouraged independent leaders? Does it not tomtom itself as the great Indian family? Aren't the rebels thrown out? Did not Vajpayee have to follow the Advaniji’s diktats, not to speak of the RSS?

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And on a note that might bring a smile to pitashri Advani’s face, a small little news item:

A Maharashtra MLA has registered a complaint against the use of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pratibha Patil’s pictures to indicate men and women’s washrooms near the VIP lounge of Nagpur’s Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport.

“Both portraits are displayed near the washrooms, which is against discipline and protocol. Symbolically, it shows that Patil’s portrait gives direction towards the women’s washroom while Manmohan Singh’s directs one to the gents’ loo.”

Just shows how our cult of worship can get terribly leaky. I fail to understand, though, how people – that too in the VIP lounge – would 'follow' the leader unless they are bladderful. It is good that we do not have Dr. Ambedkar’s statue in the famous pose, finger pointing out, anywhere in the vicinity. That would be quite a discretionary take on the constitution.

Hindus, Muslims and a Toilet

Next time I want to become part of the ‘mainstream’ I will wear red bracelets. If any of you thought that Hinduism was associated with saffron, then according to the ISI’s Major Iqbal it is not quite so. It is red. The Left parties are still nursing wounds and here some Pakistani even takes away their colour. Oh, but the Hindutvawadis had also taken away the hammer during Babri no? And maybe the sickle during the excavation? Commies are bereft and all because of the ISI.

One more story on the David Headley 'investigation'. He bought 15 red bracelets to be worn by the attackers so that they could disguise themselves as Hindus. This is part of the evidence and I can imagine those American backpacker tourists saying, “Yeah, yeah, that’s wotwesaah at those aahsim taimpills.”

I saw Shakti Kapoor wearing one. At the Ajmer dargah. Every religion has this red thread/bracelet thing, okay? Honestly, can we get serious about this? Would the Indian intelligence authorities look at the wrists of suspects? Next they will say people with varicose veins are chosen to be disguised as green Muslims.

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Smita Thackeray has complimented Muslims for not being swayed by LeT and al Qaida. What to do, Smitaji. We only sway when we are drunk.

“It is a matter of great satisfaction that Muslims have retained faith in India’s unity and communal harmony.”

Gee, thanks. Now your turn.

“The prayers of Hindus and Muslims will shield Balasaheb from any threat. The Ajmal Kasabs, Ranas and David Headleys can’t touch him, Sonia-ji or Manmohan Singh.”

What about atheists?

Ms. Thackeray’s new-found interest is because she is making a film called Babri on Babri. She insists it will be from the common man’s perspective. Of course. I should hope to see a lot of Behrampada, of Madhukar Sarpotdar and the arms, of people being made to pull down their pants in cosmopolitan Mumbai, of honest cops who were transferred. It can all be fictionalised.

Incidentally, Aamir Khan has helped her with the script. This is one common man we can wash our hands of and who will do anything to market anything.

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I do not know of many people who if they need to go the loo will take the name of the toilet. Will someone who happens to be in the Bhuleshwar area and wishes to use the facilities say, “I want to go to Kasturba Gandhi”?

No. But we have to create a noise. One bloke is angry because of one such toilet name:

“This is my fight because the public seems to be afraid to speak up. I think the British (appear in a better light) at this point since they named the road after Kasturba Gandhi, thus honouring her. We, on the other hand, have done the opposite and degraded her.”

Her husband degraded her long ago when he gave her a broom and expected her to clean lavatories. Mahatma Gandhi had great respect for ‘toilet training’. The self-righteousness by citizens is unnecessary. Shit happens, so no need to get pissed off.

A seatful for a million dollars

There is literary merit in the fact that J D Salinger’s toilet seat is up for auction. Think about the ideas many creative people say they get when they are digesting more than thoughts. Is there any truth in this phenomenon?

As a somewhat creative person, I do come up with the most imaginative description of post culinary indulgences while responding to pathology tests. One doctor even guessed I was a writer based on the poetic justice I did to what appeared to be a drab report that exposed me not only to amoebae and bacteria but also to a future reader.

Given this little episode in the nascent stages when my literary yearnings got a boost, I can conjecture with a degree of certitude that it has to do with the seating arrangement.

It is said that Rodin’s The Thinker is in such an inspired pose. With feet on the ground, while the left side of the brain is occupied in logical activity, the pressure reaches the right side and sparks off the dance of the cerebrum. There is also the psychological fact that something is leaving you; although the departure is welcome in this case, it harks back to a past. This becomes the manure to fill the fertile soil of the future. The mind suddenly has ideas and on occasion they could be psychedelic. It is quite akin to a state of deliriousness as closure is being reached.

The difference between a scientist and an artiste is that the former can soak in a bath tub, think up something and run out stark naked screaming ‘Eureka’ because he has a hypothesis; the latter, due to the peculiar task at hand cannot leave until it is over and therefore there is time to ruminate and think it through. You can later always say that you were preoccupied with your Muse.

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“I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.”

(Holden Caulfield in Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye)

Loos Morals

Happy Toilet Day! When I saw an ad this morning by one of those toilet cleaning companies, I thought it was a joke. One of those happy bogs thing to market the product. Turns out there is, indeed, more to defecation than a super bowel event.

Now don’t go screwing up your noses. It’s got big sponsors and volunteers. Quite happening.

This event has a history going back to eight years. In 2001, the World Toilet Organization decided to address the issue of worldwide sanitation. It would be easy to smirk. But, think about it. We discuss global warming which is somewhere between the clouds and the sky. This is nearer home. It is inside the home, if you are lucky to have en suite facilities.

This year Unilever's Domestos has got together to “improve the lives of those affected by poor sanitation and increase access to hygienically clean toilets around the world”. This is where I have a problem. We have the local brand from this company and their ad frightens the hell out of me. It shows these huge monsters that are supposed to be bacteria walking all over the shit throne and screaming with joy about mucking up our little daily tryst with weight loss. I have felt chastised for I have been using another brand for years. Squishing the blue liquid into the pot made me feel safe and secure. Now, these animated bacteria have been telling me for the past so many days that I have been doing it all wrong.

It’s okay for the likes of us who have private loos and a fastidiousness that comes with learned behaviour about How to Respond to Excrement with Excitement. Had I been an academician of some ill-repute I might have pondered over it and produced a big fat geek wedding kind of production on paper. But I am not. So, I turn to the best bet – cynicism. And it is valid. How many people with poor sanitation and lack of hygiene know about this squishy-squish bottled cleaning liquid? How many have basic facilities?

In the heart of my city, I have walked through lanes where women have to use umbrellas to hide their faces as they squat near the drains. I have seen people line the railway tracks. I have seen children leave little pellets of malnourished shit. There are villages where people go to the fields to relieve themselves.

Therefore, we are dealing with a bunch of people that is wooing the WC-ers. It is ethically unfair. There are events for the community, the school, the world. There is also the Big Squat, “A Movement for the Toilet-less”, to drive home the point "where would you go?" and how people without toilets are forced to go in public places.

Is this empathy? How temporary it is when they tell you, “At exactly noon on November 19th, gather your family, friends, classmates, colleagues and everyone you know to squat in public for 1 minute in support of World Toilet Day.”

You might be given a bottle of the cleaning liquid and those 60 seconds would help your knees get a bit of a workout. It won’t help anyone, unless you want to bond with the group or you are planning to visit a really backward area and your lives depend on managing this feat.

If it is noon in your part of the world and you go along with this, here you go.

As for me, I dumped it.