Against the caution of my wife I had refurbished the ground floor toilet in my house with sparkling white tiles and an equally shining white commode. Her fears had valid reasons since even small dirt on white tiles becomes an eye sore demanding frequent scrubbing, and that was the motivation for me to go for white tiles. I wanted a gleaming toilet.
My strategy to ensure a clean toilet had a parallel which I read long back. For a poultry farm owner broken eggs while transporting it in goods train was a major cause of loss. He had tried several packaging without success until someone suggested he try transporting eggs in earthen pots layered with straws. He tried it with less conviction, since more robust packing containers have failed in the past. But to his surprise it worked. Since brittle earthen pots induced a sense of caution on the men loading and unloading the goods, saving careless tossing, in turn saving the eggs inside. Similarly, a white tiled surface ensured a cleaner toilet and inculcated a better toilet discipline.
All was well until some guests called on from our native town. They left the toilet floor always wet with pug marks, due to their distinctive toilet culture. In dismay I agreed with Lalit Bhanot of the Commonwealth Games fame that the perception of a clean toilet had different meanings in different cultures. As much as I could not tolerate a wet toilet floor, my guests could not stand a dry one. They kept pouring water in the name of washing their feet. Even the exclusive bathroom slippers did not help in mitigating my woes. The visitors strutted out with wet slippers after every visit to the toilet dampening the floor, though fitted with a western commode and health faucet. All my efforts in changing their toilet culture failed and I met my Waterloo literally.
I tried to analyse the reasons for inundating toilets. But the wet and messy toilet had left me with mental constipation. In the name of cleanliness we convert the toilet into an unhygienic dingy den of a house. The door mat left lying outside the bath completes the dirty story, soaked wet always. I had recalled an incident where a member of the family had lost his ring and found it back after three months in the poorly lit bathroom, safely embedded under a barrel kept inside the bath to store water. I fondly recalled my boy scout days spent in tents during the annual camps. Every morning the master would come inspecting all the tents for cleanliness. Instead of evaluating the interiors of the tent, the master would head for the improvised toilet and kitchen area. He had a firm conviction that toilets and kitchen were the sole determinants of a clean house.
During my recent visit to the native I broached the topic of our toilet culture. As is our wont in justifying our habits, one person attributed our toilet culture to the olden ways of outside toilet, where everyone was expected to wash the feet before entering the house. I felt, we follow it now diligently while entering the bedroom from the attached toilet. A grand old man of our household was silently listening to our conversation with a wicked smile on his face. When prodded, he delivered his inimitable punch line. ‘We have perfected the art of arriving at contrived meanings. When we learnt that dry latrines were unhygienic, we construed that wet ones are hygienic’.
