A Day for Loo

On World Toilet Day, show solidarity with those who don’t have sanitation facilities by squatting on Girgaum Chowpatty

Go to Girguam Chowpatty Thursday evening and you will be greeted with a sight you see on Mumbai’s railway tracks every day—several people squatting in a row! Relax, the event is not going to be about pooping in the open though, it is an awareness drive for World Toilet Day, November 19—a Mumbai mirror report.

We, human beings have made a day for everything and have been celebrating it every year. We celebrate birthday, Independence Day, teacher’s day, mother’s day, and father’s day, etc. There is a day for loo too—sounds funny. November 19 Thursday was the World Toilet Day. Thinking about it may be disgusting but it is a serious issue, especially in this crowded city. We have such problems because we happened to be not just human beings, being civilized modern ones. Animals don’t have loos in the forests. How they manage? Their excreta don’t pile up. It will mix with the soil and nourish the same and the colour of it camouflage with the soil. They have freedom to squat anywhere on the earth. And they don’t have to clean up loos and the choking drains.

Imagine the plight of labourers who clean up the drains for us. They are also human beings doing such dirty jobs. Don’t they feel it disgusting? I feel pity for them. Seeing slum-dwellers squatting near the railway tracks is not so disgusting what is more disgusting is overflowing drains. My stomach gets upset seeing the labourers cleaning up the choking drains. Then they have to clean up more.

There were no permanent toilets in the villages. Now villages also are developing. So they started building toilets with septic tanks. But the septic tank will overflow if too much water is used to flush out. Loo in our village was a pit in our own plot laid with two logs on top to sit and screened with palm leaves and that too will be made only for large houses. Poor peasants had open air loos in their plots. The condition of the loo was unbearable, especially in the rainy season. That’s why I have been thinking for years to build a hygienic loo but without flowing drain. I am not succeded in making one yet. It still remains a pipe dream. Does anybody have idea to make a loo in that way? People will like to become architects and interior decorators but how many people will want to become toilet designers? It will be a chee, chee thing for most of them. But it is a matter of health and hygiene.

Public loos are a better place for graffiti writers. Such filthy inspiration may come to the mind while sitting quiet in a filthy room. They know people will read them more than the blogs. Long queues for loos can be seen in this city. I have read somewhere about the mobile loos that run in this city. Will they wait to finish? We don’t give much importance to the smallest 3x3 room in our flats. But we cannot live without it. Even repair work of that room is a nightmare because we cannot stop answering the call of Nature. There is no better solution for sanitary problems.