Toilet Humour

My maid lives in a one room tenement that is under renovation. The toilets are in a block some distance away and there is an early morning queue for its use (if you’ve seen Slumdog Millionaire, you’ll get the picture). The toilets, too, are being demolished and rebuilt. My maid is worried: when nature calls, how will she and her family be able to answer?

Her problems jogged memories of my own experiences now tinged with laughter thanks to the distance of time. It is one thing to use a common trench at girl guide camps or a handy sugarcane field while on a weekend picnic when you are a child; it is quite another to face that kind of experience as an adult once city life has applied the veneer of ‘civilization’. But needs must and, living in a country where private sanitation enjoys the least priority, the experience varies from exasperation to the wackily humorous.

Our first holiday as a married couple was spent in a village off a magnificent coastline but with no indoor sanitation. For short stops, we availed a screening bush or tree as and when required. When I asked my husband about how I was supposed to take care of the daily morning routine, he calmly answered ‘the rocks’. I was horrified. After two days, nature wouldn’t wait, so ‘the rocks’ it was. Armed with a roll of toilet paper and a small bucket of water, I rose at the crack of dawn, trudged to the furthest corner of the beach, climbed up the highest pile of rocks from which perch I could keep an eye on the surroundings, happily bereft of human presence. Yup, been there done that!

Journeys by road are now dotted with wayside inns and more sophisticated hostelry. But not so long ago, there was nothing but nature between departure and destination and nature flourished thanks to the passing presence of needy travelers. Been there done that, too. I also have memories of the time before flushing toilets: bathrooms were rooms and not the minuscule cubicles you find today, and sturdy commodes lined one wall. One would sit in happy camaraderie with other members of the family – preferably of the same age and sex – and get on with the job. Nature’s needs were taken care of quite naturally.

Today, I baulk at the thought of a repeat performance of any of those experiences (and that includes the ‘pig toilets’ in Goa – but that’s a story for another day). They were certainly not for the faint of heart.

There was also a time when parties and picnics were embellished with a lusty rendering of the bawdy ‘Long live the Loos of England’ (a repertoire which included ‘Daisy, Daisy’ and ‘On the Isle of Capri’), which occasioned the parental, ‘Where did you learn that?!’ Pity the occupying Brits did not think to convert that song to local legend!!