We often travelled by road when I was a child. It was great fun for my two elder sisters and me to bounce around with no seat belts in those big, roomy cars.
The downside was the lack of public toilets.
Even in Europe, in the 1950s, public toilets were hard to find and horrid to use. They were squeezed into closets and outhouses, covered in mould, and smelled of pickled nightmares. Any time we stopped at the home of a friend along the way, my mother would insist: “Go now, while you have the chance!” If we refused, out of performance anxiety or embarrassment, she would hiss in Malayalam: “Get in there and…TRY!”
On Indian roads, there were always bushes along the sides of roads. But for the prudish young traveller, these open-air sessions were an absolute torment. In those distant days, my underpants did not have elastic. The struggle was to get them down around my ankles while simultaneously holding them up with one hand to avoid wetting them. With the other hand, I held my skirt bunched up. When I was balanced on my tippy-toes and about to squat down, a lizard or some other creepy-crawly would shoot out from under the bush and I would leap up shrieking. Mum would scold me for being a total ninny. My sisters would be hysterical with laughter. And I would die of embarrassment.
The option of just “holding it” had its own terrors. I was usually the youngest child in the car, cushioned between the large, soft bodies of ladies wearing silk saris and French perfume. While the adults chatted amongst themselves, a familiar urgency would make itself known to me. Unwilling to draw attention to my needs, I would start to wriggle and fret, holding my breath and reciting the multiplication tables in my head to distract myself. Once, out of desperation, I asked whether we were “going to see Auntie soon”. Everyone thought this was terribly funny. From then on, “Going to see Auntie” became the running joke in the car, the code word for, “Uh-oh! Someone needs to go!”
Dangers of the railway toilet
By contrast, today’s traveller has it so good. There are restrooms in most restaurants and petrol stations even in India. Many are clean and some are world class. For instance, anyone who visits Dahlia, an excellent Japanese restaurant in Chennai, will urge their friends to go use the facilities whether they need to or not! The restroom has been revved up to meet Japanese standards. Not only is it pretty, but it has the kind of enlightened plumbing that makes performing natural functions feel like a spiritual experience.
At the opposite end of the scale are the familiar floor-level squatties that used to be the norm all over India. Yes, I know they are supposed to be better suited to the way the human body is constructed because the abdominal muscles get good support in that position. Alas, that knowledge is of no use to a young woman wearing high heels, tight jeans, and elastic undies, who needs to use a squattie potty on board a moving train.
I should know because I was once that young woman. With the train bouncing along, clickety-clack, clickety-clack, there I was balanced on one high-heel, struggling to get the other leg loose out of the undies and jeans. Of course, that second spiky heel got stuck in the jeans. However much I wanted to avoid standing barefoot in a railway toilet, there was no choice in the end. Both heels eventually broke off, and I had to partially undress, just to use the toilet. Then wriggle back into those impossible clothes before I could return, panting, sweating, and wobbling on those now heel-less shoes, to my seat.
In the Twilight Zone
While women’s lives have improved in many ways, in the arena of using toilets while travelling, traditional women had better options. Long, loose garments such as saris, full skirts, and even salwars worn without panties make it possible to use any kind of toilet. “Without panties” is the key: elastic underclothes are great until they have to be removed while using the toilet on board a train or aircraft. Ditto the pantyhose and skin-tight jeans that many women wear as their badge of modernity.
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There are worse experiences than tight clothing, however. A tall, willowy English traveller described a railway ride back to India from Nepal. Some calamity had resulted in two trains being cancelled. By the time she was on board, all the bogeys were packed solid with passengers. People were sleeping not just in the aisles but in the toilets too.
She was soon desperate to pee, but there was nowhere to go. In the end, kindly fellow passengers held her by the arms while she perched at the edge of the open door of the moving train to relieve herself!
Today’s traveller has it so good. There are restrooms in most restaurants and petrol stations even in India. Many are clean and some are world class.
| Photo Credit:
Manjula Padmanabhan
A very different kind of female travel experience was described by someone I will call Clueless. She and a male friend were travelling by car somewhere north of New Delhi when she needed to use the restroom. The reason I call her Clueless is that she had chosen to wear an item of precious jewellery on this road trip. Not only was it a ring that was worth upwards of five lakhs, but it was also loose on her finger.
The ring slipped off and fell into the squattie toilet of that rural chai shop. Worse yet: the toilet had recently been used and was “dirty”. The ring had landed in the muck. The lady could neither bear to reach in there to pick it out herself nor did she want to leave the toilet in case someone else came in to use it before she could get help. The car was some distance away, and she could not summon the companion.
I am so desperately squeamish that I shudder even now just thinking about this situation! I believe I would have left the ring and run away, telling myself that the Universe had taught me a good lesson. When I have asked friends what they would have done, one of them instantly came up with the sanest and most obvious solution. “No issue! I’d slip my hand into a plastic bag and pick up the ring. No different to picking up my dog’s poop when we go for a walk.” Clueless, of course, took the typical route of someone who owns a five lakh rupee bauble: she called one of the restaurant workers and offered him Rs.5,000 in cash to get the ring out for her. And he did.
Public restrooms have become standardised at least in urban areas around the world. Some, however, have slipped into the Twilight Zone. In Belgium, I went to a ladies’ restroom with glass-fronted stalls—got that? CLEAR GLASS. I had not really wanted to use the facilities, so I took one look and fled, saying to myself: “These Europeans Are Crazy!”
But no, said my very genial Belgian host with a foxy grin: “The clear glass becomes opaque when you turn the lock on the door!” Aargh. Having failed that test, later that very same day, I failed again. This time it was in the elegant boutique hotel where my host had booked me a two-night stay. The interior decor was opera house meets bordello: turned-wood furniture and thick pile carpet, with gold fittings in the bathroom and a sunken bath. I loved the idea of sunken baths—never having used one—based on classical paintings showing beautiful harem ladies lounging in the steaming water with their equally beautiful slaves pouring scented oils from graceful pitchers.
With these elegant thoughts in mind, I adjusted the water temperature, turned on the taps and waited for the water to fill. When it occurred to me that this might take a while, I decided to take a wee nap in the luxurious four-poster bed while I waited. Bad move. By the time I woke up, the bath had filled and flowed out. That lovely bathroom with its peacock-feather motif was now inch-deep in water because unlike in the tropics, European bathrooms do not have drains in their floors!
Family precedent
I should have known better because there was a family precedent. Years before I was born, my parents and sisters were travelling out of India, by ship. They stayed in a hotel in the port city of Genoa, in Italy. One sister was slightly unwell, so the other sister, out of sheer boredom, began playing with the taps in the bathtub. She turned them on, forgot about them, and went off for dinner with our parents.
Dahlia, a Japanese restaurant in Chennai, has the kind of enlightened plumbing that makes performing natural functions feel like a spiritual experience.
| Photo Credit:
Manjula Padmanabhan
By the time they came back, the hotel room had been turned into a very shallow swimming pool. Thus their very first night in Europe was spent desperately swabbing the floor with the large, fluffy towels to prevent their disaster being noticed. Which was exactly what I did too!
Bath areas can be fraught with other types of danger. A friend of mine, whom I will call Intrepid, had travelled to London. He stepped into the newly installed glass shower cabin of the apartment where he was a guest and had a lovely hot shower. However, when he tried to get out again, the handle came away in his hand. The tight rubber seal on the door made it impossible for him to push open the door. He was effectively trapped inside for the next eight hours until his host returned from work!
Unwilling to spend the whole day shivering and helpless, he tried to climb over the top by standing on the plumbing fixtures. They could not take his weight and broke off. Water began to pour into the stall. Now in danger of drowning, Intrepid literally had no option but to break the glass using the handle to get out.
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Foreign travellers coming to India routinely complain about bathroom facilities. However, there is one item whose lack many Indian travellers complain about when they are away on foreign trips: the humble plastic mug. Most Indians (if not most Asians) cannot complete a trip to the toilet without needing to “wash”. Some European countries have bidets installed in their hotel rooms, including “health” faucets. In Finland, for instance, there was even the thrill of a health faucet with hot and cold water!
My parents, during their inaugural trip to Europe, had no such luxuries. On their way back by car from a famous Catholic shrine in France, one of my sisters desperately needed a “wash”. With no other options available at short notice, she was forced to use the small bottle of holy water they had just collected from Lourdes!
By contrast, today’s travellers have a range of “portable bidets” to choose from. They all look rather hilarious, and I would feel very self conscious walking the length of a train or an airport holding one of them aloft.
On board flights, however, I have found a simple solution. The reason it works is that airline toilets are so tiny that the sink can be reached from the toilet. The method is to make a wad of toilet paper, lean over to the sink, lightly wet the wad, and apply it to the relevant body part.
Ta-daaa! Repeat at will. Then exit the toilet looking smug and feeling refreshed.
Manjula Padmanabhan is an author, playwright, artist, and cartoonist. Her most recent book is Taxi, a witty, racy novel set in Delhi about a woman taxi driver.
