toilet talk

I have diarrhea for the first time today. I felt a little strange yesterday and spent most of the day lying down, and now the reason is coming out. No blood or fever, so it shouldn't be bad. Possible sources are too many to list. Maybe I got a little bit of the water in my mouth when I took a shower, or maybe it was just a dish I didn't dry well enough. Or it could have been some of the uncooked fruit and vegetables I ate this week. Could I turn down fresh guava with cilantro and black pepper in someone's home? Gotta live a little... I am glad, though, that I bought toilet paper yesterday. It is hard to find here. I went to the market on Berasia Rd yesterday to look for some. I asked at a one stand that sold toiletries and they had no idea what I was talking about. They gave me paper and pen. I drew a picture of a roll of toilet paper. "Ah," they said, "you want basket." No, no. Maude says I need to get used to doing without toilet paper, especially if I am going on the march to Delhi. The local alternative to toilet paper is to use your left hand and a small pitcher or cup of water. Every bathroom has one that you can fill with a faucet. I just didn't feel like making the switch yesterday. Last night Matthias showed me to a place that kept some toilet paper in stock. It is as expensive here as it is back in the U.S. - almost a dollar a roll.

There are several kinds of toilets in India. The main one is the Indian-style toilet. This is a pear-shaped hole in the floor, framed by two treaded porcelain foot rests embedded in the floor. You squat (really the most natural position for letting it out, in light of the internal anatomy of the process) and then use the faucet and a cup of water to clean with your left hand. Whether you use this method or not, it is forbidden to do certain things with your left hand, like shake someone's hand. The second kind of toilet is the "Western" or "sit-down" toilet, which has been available as an option in most places I've been. A third kind of toilet is very strange and a bit of a mystery to most people I've talked to. It is the hybrid toilet. This is a Western-style, sit-down toilet with treaded foot pads sticking off the sides of the bowl like wings. It is hard to imagine anyone actually squatting on top of this thing, so high off the floor -- it seems like that would be dangerous, almost. And sitting on it is just as strange. I think everyone just avoids the hybrid toilet, which I had seen in photos before I ever came here, but they are nevertheless still manufactured and installed.

There are public urinals here, too -- something sorely needed in NYC. Usually it's just a unmarked nook behind a concrete wall. Sometimes rows of nooks. On the floor is just a little hole or a ridge in which some water trickles by. Sometimes it it's just a hole at the bottom of the floor so that the urine just runs out onto the ground, leaving privacy as the bathroom's only real purpose. The sewer systems I have seen here in Bhopal and elsewhere in India are open or semi-open. There are troughs or concrete ditches in which dirty water flows or trickles and meets up with other channels from other streets. Sometimes these are wide open and visible, but they are often covered by stepping-stone-style blocks of concrete. It's really hard to tell what's going on -- I see cracks, holes, and gaps around and there is liquid in motion underneath, and that's all I know right now. All the sewage and piping here at Sambhavna empties somewhere in the garden, but I'm not sure exactly where or how. We have to use only biodegradable soaps here. I have been showering with homemade lye-and-lipids soap with mint leaves mixed in it that my friend Erin made me in Brooklyn. I might figure out how to make my own for laundry if I can't find an alternative to borrowing Matthias's special biodegradable laundry detergent he brought all the way from Switzerland and will certainly not be available around here.