In Defense of Toilets

It’s the 100th year of the lavatory- or so says the Hindustan Times. I sure am glad that it is, even if it’s really not. My happiness stems from the realisation of the comfort which all our umpteen modern ‘conveniences’ (talk about fitting names!) have brought to our lives. Sadly, we seem to take all of them, including the humble toilet, for granted.

Arguably, the toilet is one of the single most important invention without which the progress of human civilisation would not have been possible. Without toilets life would’ve been miserable, trudging to the bush and back again every second hour. Without toilets we would never have had ample time to devote ourselves purely to work or leisure, for we would still be nicking into the nearest convenient bush to answer nature’s inexorable call. Villages would not have developed into Kingdoms, Kingdoms not into Empires; Empires would not have fallen, Kingdoms again not risen, Monarchies then not evolved into Democracies.

Considering the pivotal role which toilets have played in human history, it is surprising that so little attention has been paid to them in world literature. The near-universal silence of literature on this vital aspect of human life is as shocking as it is suspect…a gigantic consensual conspiracy of silence, transcending all socio-politico-cultural barriers and shadow lines, seems to be underway to edge out the toilet from public consciousness, thus denying it its rightful place in the annals of history as one of the most fundamental building block of human civilisation. Indeed, the degenerative mythification of the toilet as a cultural taboo unworthy of mention is one of the greatest crimes which Literature is yet to be accounted for.

A world without toilets, a world wherein we did not pee or shit is unimaginable. Yet, the evidence afforded by our Literature seems to suggest otherwise. In no work have I come across a passage wherein somebody just breaks off with a “I gotta pee”. The narratives just go on without any regard for realism. This tendency towards deliberate over-simplification and programmatic marginalisation of important life-processes is markedly prominent in ancient and medieval literature.

Consider for example Homer. The great bard versified so much, yet he could not bring himself to make any single one of his characters to relieve themselves when it’s patently obvious that all of them must’ve spent a considerable amount of time and effort doing so. By a rough estimate, there must’ve been more than 90,000 men in the Achaian army. While the high ups like Achilles must’ve had the luxury of deflating themselves in small pots in the comfort of their tents, a majority of the common soldiery would’ve had to go out, either by the sea or under cover of wooded Ida. Imagine first the sight, thousands upon thousands of men groggily tramping out of their miserable camps to ease out last night’s ration. Imagine then the cumulative stench which would have accumulated around the camp in 10 long years of continuous excreta. Imagine now the environmental degradation, the inestimable damage done to the rivers and fields of Troy. All these are important, pertinent issues, but that all too famous poet sheds no light upon them.

The additional burden of structural artificiality of irresolvable, unbelievable imbalances added on to such fantastic works as epics becomes all the more apparent when one tries to imaginatively identify with their characters. Take the Ramayana. Ramanand Sagar’s version; the final fearsome aerial battle betwixt Ram and Ravan. A volley of abuse and deadly arrows flying over to each side. The tacky ‘mahasangram’ tune blaring in the background.

(Mahasangram! Ek dharm raath par baitha, ek paap rath par baitha, do maha bali, do maha rathi sangram karte hain! Antim charan mai yudh Ravan Ram karte hain! Yudham, yudham, yudham maha-yudham!)
Ram (righteous wrath): Neech nishachar! Asahaiye striyon pe veerta dikhane vale kayar! Tu kis baat par apne ko veer kehta hai! Dharm ki maryada bhang karne vale paapi! Teere samast paapon ka dand aaj tyujhe avash milega! (lightning across the blue-red-yellow-green sky; Narad and Devtas nod in approval)
(Mahasangram! Ek dharm raath par baitha, ek paap rath par baitha, do maha bali, do maha rathi sangram karte hain! Antim charan mai yudh Ravan Ram karte hain! Yudham, yudham, yudham maha-yudham!)
Ravan (devlish sarcasm): Dand dene ka kaam raja ka hai, bhikari ka nahi! (demonic laugh) Hahaha! (more lightning; Narad and an assortment of devtas look worried)
(Mahasangram! Ek dharm raath par baitha, ek paap rath par baitha, do maha bali, do maha rathi sangram karte hain! Antim charan mai yudh Ravan Ram karte hain! Yudham, yudham, yudham maha-yudham!)
Ram (eyeballs popping out in anger; taking up his bow): He paapi, kshatriya prahar karte hain, shastron se, shabdon se nahi! Seh mera var!
(Mahasangram! Ek dharm raath par baitha, ek paap rath par baitha, do maha bali, do maha rathi sangram karte hain! Antim charan mai yudh Ravan Ram karte hain! Yudham, yudham, yudham maha-yudham!)
Ravan (casanovic carelessness; taking up his mace): Kaal tumhe pukar raha he Ram!
(Mahasangram! Ek dharm raath par baitha, ek paap rath par baitha, do maha bali, do maha rathi sangram karte hain! Antim charan mai yudh Ravan Ram karte hain! Yudham, yudham, yudham maha-yudham!)
Ram (sheepish, but with all the Iskvaku dignity): Ruko Ravan! Ruko! Shan bhar ke liye ruko! Yudh viram karo! Aaj subah se sonch nahi gaya hun: aab sheegra, ati-sheegra jana hoga! Mai abhi aya...(to Matali, the charioteer of his divine raath)…Matali, jaldi jungle chalo!
(Ravan, Lakshman, Hanuman, Sugreev, Jamvant, Narad, Devtas and others aghast)
(Mahasangram! Ek dharm raath par baitha, ek paap rath par baitha, do maha bali, do maha rathi sangram karte hain! Antim charan mai yudh Ravan Ram karte hain! Yudham, yudham, yudham maha-yudham!)

I mean, I can take dragons and walking mummies and gandharvas and fairies and daemons, but I simply cannot believe in a world where nobody never ever needs to shit and pee!

Just how simple and easy it would’ve been for us students and critics of humanities, of history, sociology, religion, politics, psychology and literature, if writers had just mentioned the toilets of the rich and famous they immortalised. Had Plutarch just dropped in a line or two about Caesar’s loo before he fell with ‘Et tu’, we could’ve have saved a whole colosseum full of money spent in archaeological excavations. Had the unknown bard of Beowulf just put in a few verses about his lavatory we would not be scratching our head with regard to early Anglo-Saxon conveniences. Had Shakespeare made Hamlet continue his trauma while letting go of his inner tensions our perception of Elizabethan hygiene would’ve been a lot less murky. Had Eliot given Maggie just a wee more room in a little loo of her own we would’ve better understood not just her but the Mill, and so the Victorian milieu, as a whole…

Had…if…the literary history of the toilet’s representation is a sad invisible chronicle of deliberately squandered opportunities, of blatant sacrifices of realism to arbitrary cultural norms in the name of a mythical purity. Of course, Literature’s reprehensible role in the formation of these norms, as for other norms, cannot be over-emphasised. The loss, however, has also been Literature’s, for the toilet’s comic, tragic and tragi-comic (things…cameras…going down the chute) potential has been largely unrealised.

Fortunately, the democratisation of Literature along with the emergence of literatures has ushered in an open-minded honesty which slightly redeems it of past atrocities. (Post) Modern writers in their depiction of reality-which is no longer thrice removed from anything-do not shy away from toilet scenes, be it escaping the police by jumping down a toilet in the Louvre in Brown’s Da Vinci Code or wild sex in an asylum’s washroom in a Bond thriller. However, what really broke the porcelain ceiling was the entry of cinema and television and its depicting of all sorts of toilet and toilet-related activities: sex, strangulation, drinking, electrocution, smoking, stabbing, graffiti, cat-fights, vandalism and so on. Posterity will be indebted to modern-and post-modern-cinema and television for an open, unbiased and healthy pursuit of lavatoric realism which does away with the restrictions of previous narrow eras...

There comes a time in every society’s history wherein it makes a tryst with destiny. Long ago, with the emergence of modernism, we did that and the time has come to redeem that pledge. At the dawn of history the toilet started its unending quest for glory and the trackless centuries are filled with its unyielding struggles. The toilet’s star has finally risen and Literature now stands at the cusp of a new age, a new dawn of equality and emancipation. Freedom and power have brought us a responsibility to correct the wrongs of the past, and we must all labour hard to give expression to our reality, to write in unison for the formation of a better, shitty world…

The Times Are Changing...

“You mark my words! The times are changing from bad to worse…its God’s will- the end of the world is near!”


I was having a slightly heated discussion with Mrs.N, mother of a good friend of mine, on that favourite lamentation of the old and the middle aged alike- the changing times. For the space of a quarter of an hour or so we duelled, each presenting one case after the other. As the argument picked up speed, her points started becoming stronger and stronger until she pronounced the said words with such a vehement air of finality that I was forced to concede defeat. I had lost.

However, now that I think of it, are the times really changing for the worse?

Utilitarianism has reached unprecedented levels- the bonds that hold human beings to the bigger superstructure, society, have become narrow and fragile. In this day and age of ‘me and mine’, corruption and all sort of criminal activities have become multi headed hydra like problems which no single Hercules can club down to death. Competition, nay, unbridled and unchecked competition has lent to every human being’s public and private existence an element of the ‘cut throat’ that, to use a simile employed often for this purpose, makes the everyday life of everyday people worse than a “dog’s life”. Global warming, hunger, poverty, AIDS, jihad- all of these threaten the very existence of this most marvellous race.

So perhaps Mrs. N is right when she declares that the times are changing for the worse. Perhaps the end of the world is near. Perhaps…

Perhaps no.

Yes, perhaps no. What right, what moral and historical right does a middle-aged housewife, or for that matter, any ‘we-know-what’s right’ sort of a patronizing, condescending middle-aged person has to pass a judgement against the ‘times’?

He/she is, after all, alive.

I mean had the times been changing for the worse, then would life expectancy have increased? Let’s see, what was the average life expectancy in India a hundred years ago? Um, about thirty-five, wasn’t it? Thirty-five years just a century ago and undoubtedly not more than that in the preceding centuries.

So, to be alive at the age of around fifty is in itself a huge, huge indicator of how things have taken a turn for the good. And it’s not just life expectancy, it’s almost each and every aspect of modern life- electricity, cars, airplanes, Rajdhanis, houses, electric stoves, mixers, grinders, taps, municipal water supply, hospitals, public transport, T.V., radio, internet, shoes, nail cutters, combs, face creams, electric shavers, tables, chairs, pencils, lead, paper, pens, pins, clips- everything! Where would we have been had it not been for all this and infinitely more? Most probably, people like you and me, normal, everyday people with no royal blood and no great aristocratic lineage to boast of, would, even two hundred years ago in this city of Delhi, have been living in one room houses or perhaps straw shanties outside the walls of Shahjahanabad…

People say that crime is on the rise today- the rate of murders, rapes, burglaries is rising at an unchecked pace. Look back into the squalor of Delhi’s, India’s past-were there not rapes, murders, arsons, pillages? Did they not occur on a larger, more organised scale? Delhi has been looted, its men beheaded, its woman raped and its children carried away as slaves not once or twice but countless times, most notably and most horrendously by the Timur Lang, Nadir Shah and the British of the East India Company.

To say that all this happened in the times of the Mussalmans and that the Age of the Hindus was a much better one is nothing but an elaborate bogey, a hoax. Did not the princes of medieval, post-Gupta age raid each other’s lands for treasure and ‘bounty’? Was not ancient India, the India of the Mauryas, the Cholas marked by savagery and violence of the most barbaric and inhuman kind? Is not war a ‘dharma’ of the Kshetriyas, the rulers of the age of Hindu hegemony and did not war remain a never ending, never ceasing process all through the history of India, especially in the Age of the Empire, the Mauryas, Guptas and, more recently, Mughals, all of whom had large standing armies which, according to one expert, “fed on war”?...

Some people would say that all this lies in the realm of politics, that feuds of kings and rulers had little effect on the lives of common people, who, to these doom day sayers, lived simple and down to earth lives?

To these people, I say yes and no.

Yes, for I acknowledge that simplicity was and, decreasingly so, still is a virtue that characterises the rural man’s/woman’s life. Essentially a country of innumerable villages, many of them not more than a hundred houses strong, the Indian rural landscape was and still is of closely knit communities that share each other’s joys and sorrow’s. Slow moving, almost fixed, this ‘quasi-static’ way of life was more or less self sufficient and independent of outside interference, except, of course, in times of emergencies.

Which, considering the long history of fighting and warfare in India, were not all that rare. This, and some other arguments, lead me to ‘no’.

Agreed rural Indian lifestyle, the lifestyle of the masses, was simple. Simply horrendous in fact, for there is no better example of organised, officially sanctioned and justified slavery in the world than the one afforded by the caste system of ancient and, more so, medieval India. True life was ‘peaceful’, but yet that peace was naught but a floating castle suspended in mid air without any real foundation. The bubble was bound to burst and it did burst, sporadically at the time of the Muslim invasion when the condition of all castes except the Brahman and the Kshetriya was as pitiable, beggarly and appalling as possible and fully and completely in recent memory. If caste based politics and caste inspired violence have become blots on the history of democratic India, we have only our forefathers, our castist forefathers, followers of that disgusting demagogue Manu, to blame.

Talking of democracy, is not the creation of a democratic nation-a nation where there is ‘freedom, justice and liberty’ for all-in a land where political entities have always been forged by the might of the sword and the shedding of blood in itself a wonder and so, a sure-shot indicator of better things to come?...

Taking sides is always a tricky affair. What is needed, therefore, is, as (perhaps?) Buddha called it, a middle path-a place from where can balance both the optimist and the pessimist. For while it would be naivety to suggest that things are on a roll, it would also be stupidity to announce the Day of Judgement to be nigh. Human life has always been, is and will always be too complex to be defined and its one course predicted by sticking to just one extreme and ignoring the merits of the other. We, the members of this race, have an infinite capacity and potential for not just good but also evil and the cultural progress from barbarism to modernity has only helped in making the inner and, consequently, outer tussle between the two more pronounced. So while it must be accepted that there are many, if not some, very glaring aberrations and very cancerous abnormalities in modern life, it must also be acknowledged that all never was, never is and never will be lost and that even the realisation of the presence of these aberrations and abnormalities is in itself a step in the positive direction towards their final elimination.

This is surely not utopia.

But the times are changing…