'SOCH' evolution

The 80s saw the emergence of a new thought process having latrine in the houses

Jahan soch wahan Shauchalay — Vidya Balan’s commitment to the campaign championing the cause of building toilets for increased awareness in the area of sanitation — got me going.

When I was really small, in the early 1970s, our family visited Nanjanagud.  This pilgrimage town near Mysore on the banks of Kabini is the home to a beautiful temple.  A distant uncle had a big house here and it was customary for an overnight stay, which would facilitate an early morning darshan.  Customary, till we realised that the ‘defecation’ step as part of the morning ablution was an open pit at the back of the house. Nevertheless for us kids it was quite embarrassing and needless to say the ‘customary’ became a day-trip, en route to the temple complex.

Later in our early teens, we loved going to our grandma’s house here in Bengaluru where all cousins congregated during vacation time. There was only one aspect to this stay that we all dreaded. Connected again to the morning time ‘I have to go’ ritual; a ‘latrine’ that was separated from the main house by 25-30 metres.

 The ritual included carrying a bucketful of water from an outside storage tank. This compartment was situated in the backyard among bushes and plants.

The morning walk was a scenic route to enjoy with the butterflies and moths,  bees and the squirrels, while the sunset walk was ‘eerie’ because it required a strong heart to walk amid the sounds of cricket and croaking of  frogs.  ‘Sky was the limit’ literally, since this part of the house did not have a roof! It was another sight to see the crows perched on tree branches right on top.

Showers were a rarity and the bathrooms were housed as the last compartment.  Devoid of what we see today as modern gadgets, the bathrooms housed a storage tank, a brick-structure that had a huge copper pot to heat the water, some firewood in an attic-like arrangement, and a plastic bucket (but most likely an iron bucket) with a pitcher to pour the water. Hooks to hang our clothes were often a luxury, a mirror a definite no-no!  The bathrooms invariably had a small window and was dark most of the time.  These two parts of the house were mutually exclusive.

The 80s saw the emergence of a new thought process and houses started to put more design. What emerged as an ‘eureka’ thought was the latrine moved indoors, this now became the last compartment.

There was no ‘adventure’ associated with post sunset visits to this place. Always only one in number per house, the ‘Indian style’ was the ubiquitous one in most households.

The one grew in number to be many, the area grew in size, even transformed into a ‘western style’; but the radical design brought the two booths together in an ‘amalgamated’ approach.  It started to acquire much ‘closer-to-the-heart’ vantage positions situated as ‘attached’ fitments to a bedroom.