The bottom of the issue

The last line of a WH Auden poem from the 40s is: “We must love  each other or die”. Three decades later, asked by the editor of his Collected Works whether he would change any line of all his work, he said he would now end the poem: “We must love each other and die.” Years and experience to shift philosophical perspectives. I myself, some years ago, wrote the following meditation on a significant development in urban India:  “I must go down to the Shulabh again, /To the Shulabh Shauchalay! /A Rupee a pee, /Two for a poo —/Everything short of a lay”. Now, some years on, I too wish revise the last line. After experiences in Delhi and Mumbai, the last line should perhaps read: “Under certain conditions, a lay!” I am not saying I availed of any of the facilities on offer. I went to these lavatorial establishments out of anthropological curiosity and the journalistic imperative to explore and read various proffered signs.

For those who think that the toilet facilities offered in our cities are not a topic worthy of discussion — and I met some of these at a very exclusive dinner party in Mumbai—I may say I have high authority for the pursuit. I had a profound and insightful discussion on this very subject with none other than VS Naipaul. He agreed that the introduction of the affordable, free enterprise toilet-facility, is one of the great advances in urban hygiene and the chief theatre of anti-stink pollution. This discussion came about in a strictly literary, unusual context.

In an article extolling the bum-shower, I had proclaimed it to be an Indian advance. Having interacted with Europeans and Americans, who are strictly toilet-paper users, I said our subcontinental lota-fixation had steered us thus into the modern age. A Japanese reader e-mailed, protesting that the bum-shower was their patented invention. He was very indignant, as though, for all the world, I had claimed that cousin Maneckshaw wrote Mozart or cousin Caavas discovered America! Others wrote to say they didn’t wish to see these subjects discussed in proper newspapers— if they wanted this sort of muck, they knew where to go.

I was recalling these literary exchanges to VS because his An Area of Darkness was the first book, after Indian nationalism had gone into denial, to point out that Indians pissed and excreted openly in the street. The book caused a stir. The stirred and shaken forgot that the Mahatma, in his writing, laid great emphasis on an openness about human waste and took on the cleaning of toilets to combat casteism. VS and I, over a glass or two of his fine Claret, agreed that far from being taboo, it remained an important subject. Now, when in Delhi he is always at the Maurya, but he empathised with my contention that these Shauchalays, despite the Vedic pretension of their name, were an advance.

Not that there weren’t public toilets before; but that  free municipal provision gave stinking a bad name and turned into pools of festering, impassable filth. One needn’t exaggerate and compare the development of the clean, cheap, paying toilet to the accomplishments of, shall we say, Einstein or Columbus  but one can confidently say: render unto science the things that are scientific, unto Columbus the things that are Columbus’ and directly unto the sewer the things that are crap.

Which brings me to a problem and a new year’s resolution I have shared with many a male friend in the West. Very many males get into arguments and with their female partners about—how shall I put this? —pissing or dribbling on the floor outside the toilet bowl. Missing the mark seems to be an intractable problem for the half-awake male. There are, we argue, biologically mitigating circumstances for this admitted crime. Three factors need considering, ladies and gentlemen of the jury!

Firstly, there is the question of not being alert enough to aim the appendage accurately into the centre of the bowl. Have you ever been able to predict with absolute accuracy the thrust and direction of a garden hose? Then there is the amount of push one can generate from the internal muscles that jet the liquid out. Once the  extent of pressure reaches consciousness, all can be controlled. It’s the first and last bursts that go astray. We then have to contend with the post-feminist generation of partners that won’t subject themselves or the au pair to the Gandhian task. Some men I know have been relegated to the external toilets of their freezing houses. Is there hope, brothers? 

In my childhood I saw men squatting by the side of the road to perform. One could, if the macho-ego were checked, revert, I suppose, to this shameful posture.

The writer is a script-writer based in London.