When you gotta go…
Men can relieve themselves anywhere, but for women the search for a public loo is a daunting prospect
Shanta Gokhale
To pee or not to pee â that cannot be the question. When you want to go, you want to go. The question is, where? Particularly if youâre a woman.
Film-maker Paromita Vohra, sponsored by PUKAR, went looking for the answer up and down and across our city with a complementary look at Delhi thrown in. A wry, 55-minute documentary entitled, Q2P resulted. Q2P reveals, inter alia, that public toilets do not figure in the development design of our city.
Architect-activist Neera Adarkar spreads a huge map of Mumbai on her table. She points to areas earmarked for civic amenities like parks, swimming pools, etc.
But nowhere on that map is there an inch of space marked for public loos. If private organisations keen on toilets apply to the BMC for space, however, space may be granted. Thatâs how we have Sulabh Shauchalayas, bless them.
Meanwhile, just for the record, Shanghai has 3,800 public toilets with plans for more. A three-phase project is currently underway for more and better loos to be completed in time for the World Expo 2010.
But Shanghai, as we all know, is a chimera. Down on the ground, at Dadar Terminus, Vohra notices thereâs no âladiesâ next to the âgentsâ. Discussing the absence with two polite men in a cramped restaurant, she asks, impolitely, what if women were to pee in the open? They laugh, shocked. How can she, a lady, ask such a question? Women cannot pee in the open because we are cultured people. So, if youâre a woman, culture must take precedence over nature.
I recall a poster from many years ago, that showed three women standing in a row, their backs to us, legs apart with a bottom line that read: âStand up for your rightsâ.
Clever line, but what rights? Most women know only duties, one of which is never to let the world know that they too have physical needs. Vohra discovers this in her wanderings. Where do women go if they are sweeping the streets for example, or faced with an hour-long commute home? Her interviewees giggle uncontrollably. Finally, one woman explains the âsystemâ. The system is to ignore the call. To simply not think that you want to go until you get home. Woman after woman confirms that total bladder control works perfectly each time.
Naturally you donât need the system if you belong to the well-heeled class. Being a woman then is no problem. The best loos in the city are open to you, in five-star hotels like the Taj, or in fancy coffee shops.
But if youâre a young girl in a municipal school? Welcome to flooded floors, mouldy walls, black holes, broken doors. This is the most gut-wrenching section of Q2P. Girls with fresh faces, neatly tied red ribbon bows and eager eyes, tiptoe out of messy toilets that tell them exactly what their worth is in the eyes of their city. Is the BMC so strapped for funds that it cannot look after its own? Good heavens no says Shilpa Naik of the BMC Teachersâ Union. A huge supplementary fund is available to the BMC from the Total Literacy Campaign for just such work. But the fund remains unutilised. It lapses and goes back to where it came from.
At the end of the screening at the Max Mueller Bhavan, someone asks Vohra the inevitable question. What is the solution to the problem? Vohra responds with the documentary film-makerâs classic disclaimer. We cannot provide solutions. We only explore issues. Fair enough. But in her many-layered exploration of this issue, one glaring lacuna remains. She has not asked the one question that simply begged to be asked. How can funds granted to the BMC for a specific project, be allowed to lapse without anybody being held accountable? The âconcerned authorityâ, whoever it was, should have been collared and made to explain.
URL- http://www.mumbaimirror.com/nmirror/mmpaper.asp?sectid=14&articleid=10320062157592651032006215547625