[jyoti]

We've all read the posts about how to use the Indian bathroom, how the hand/water things works, the pros and cons of TP vs. pani...  I admit, I have tried both. I'm not particularly fond of the water method, but when TP isn't available, it's handy.  (no pun intended. )  But I have one lurking question that I can't bear to ask in public:  

What do Indians do in the bathroom while they're waiting to dry!!??  





Disclaimer: G rated, k?  

Edited by jyoti, 16 October 2007 - 10:43 AM.

[priya]

Jyoti, do you think everyone's too shy to answer??

Maybe you should kick off  pksmiley.gif   2.4K   1 downloads - it IS your thread, after all

[iwanttogoback]

not something i'd ever thought of, but now i'd REALLY like to know!

[Judi]

priya, on Oct 16 2007, 03:24 PM, said:

Jyoti, do you think everyone's too shy to answer??

Maybe you should kick off pksmiley.gif - it IS your thread, after all

Priya - you always have the most amazing range of smilies/emoticons/whatever:  where on earth do you get them from ?????

[gautam]

No answers yet! Did people get cold feet?

About those Indians, lots of them live in deserts, the Thar being the most populated desert in the world: wondered about them, too!

And what about them ones up in the Himalayas?

[jyoti]

Well, desert = low humidity = quick dry.  But below freezing?  That, I have heard, is why we developed TP!  

So far:

Countin' flowers on the wall...  
Pick my nose
Jiggle (doesn't really seem to help)
Flush
Sigh
yell "just a minute" as someone tries the door
touch up my makeup?
Start over
Give up and promise to bring TP next time...

[priya]

Read?  Nothing like a good novel.


Below freezing TP - icicles??

[gautam]

He He! I miscommunicated! Meant to say that them injuns in that there desert lack for pani, too precious for personal hygiene: just sand, ouch!

Also in the HIGH Himalayas, in the rain shadow, little water, less incentive!  Has anyone checked out the traditional Garhwali dress design, for the upper reaches, for the menfolk at least. I used to live at 8000 feet + for 2 years, and have personal knowledge and visual memories that need not be repeated here.

And not to make fun of those people either. One has to understand the conditions they survive, and the terrific people they are, before their personal hygiene, toilet and bathing issues place some sort of barrier betwween us and them. I would not be able to survive a day; the womenfolk probably are able to carry 3/4 their own bodyweight of grass up 60% or steeper slopes, slippery with rain day after day on miserable diets, bear attacks etc.

Never a word of complaint why their life should be so tough. We gave our milkman a few jars and bottles and tin cans, left over from stuff one uses. The man was so grateful he went searching the forests and returned with a yard long strip of cassia bark worth a couple of hundred rupees or more in those distant days.

Someone lost a walletful of money, more than a year's income for any of these people; and yet, one of the "coolies" [how I loathe that word] went up and down the mountainside querying all the tourist bungalows and such until the rightful American owners were discovered. I can furnish you with the names of the latter, should you want to verify my story.

So, in the face of this, what does it matter what they do with their toilet habits? I know exactly what they do, having watched from high altitudes, peeking into places downslope; after a time, living round the year, nothing remains concealed. So what? I wish I could be 1/10,000 as good a human beings as they.


Just as a sidenote, I would add that children would spend the whole day climbing trees in very dangerous slopes, breaking off twigs with their toes, this being a reserve forest, just so  they could get sufficient fuel to cook their daily meal! Every month, at LEAST 7 days would be wasted while the adults went off a long distance away to bring back wood for their fuel needs. Can you imagine winters without heat, thick snow outside?

We were lower middle class, with our 4-5 layered thick wool blankets, but no heat: turning around in bed would wake us up! The room temperatures in our better built homes would be around 2-3 C; I hate to think what it was in those other shelthers. We would keep one small room where we would light a tin stove and keep warm during the day; even this was denied them.

We would heat water in another tin contraption with pine cones, leaves and twigs, but not they. Why: because we had big roofs [thus area] with corrugated tin and guttering to collect rainwater, and large concrete tanks to hold it year round, so water for baths and showers. Not for them.

Not lecturing or hectoring you, mind. Merely introducing you to another aspect of life in India that may have been unfamiliar to you. What do Indians do? struck me as a bit strange. Indians are not the OTHER, a bunch all similar out there, winking at each other at the discomfitures suffered by firangis, you know.

I'm sorry if the question rubbed some raw nerves in me, because I know it never was meant in that way at all.

[WonderWomanUSA]

For Gautam: thanks for the reminder about those lovely people in the Garwahl area; in addition to their other virtues, they are very kind and welcoming to strangers and I will always love them for that.

For OP: I do not recall any "waiting to dry" in the days  when I could squat and use water. Isn't that why we wear knickers and petticoats under sarees? Or kamezz long enough to hide the evidence of slightly damp salwar?

Or maybe this is more than you ever really wanted to know...  

Edited by WonderWomanUSA, 22 October 2007 - 10:24 PM.

[noflylist]

reading Gautam's post rekindled a memory, ours was a coal powered stove (being smack in the middle of the coal belt) and after dinner we would gather around the stove and probably talked more than we do now (bonding was not the word we knew.)

[jyoti]

"What do Indians do" is only in comparison to the impatient ferungi who is ready to be done... and doesn't have the patience to simply sit and airdry (of all the arguments pro and con each method, no one has ever said TP is just faster!).  or same ferungi on the other side of the door  who is standing outside the door wondering "what on earth takes them so long!?"  

Most people in the South use western toilets. One of the ladies i know told me, "some people say squatty potties are cleaner because you don't actually sit on it..."  I told her, "Well, we American ladies rarely sit on a public Western toilet!  We squat over it...  And believe me, it's easier to squat over a squatty potty than over a much higher Western toilet."  

Her eyes got huge.  "Really?  You don't sit on it..  Really?"  It's all those things your mama teaches you, but no one's gonna tell you when you're a grown up.  

(As for reading a novel... not when I just used my left hand to wipe!!  Especially when the sink's the other side of the room.  Hahahaha.)

Edited by jyoti, 23 October 2007 - 12:11 PM.

[priya]

Quote

(As for reading a novel... not when I just used my left hand to wipe!! Especially when the sink's the other side of the room. Hahahaha.

Ah, but the reading is while you're waiting - that was your question - while you're waiting   TP wasn't an option

[Hyderabadi]

If done right, there is no waiting involved, and doing it right comes out of years of experience.

Books, TV, Jiggling, damp spots, Blow Dryers, air drying, not pro at all.   Sorry.

[priya]

Your post sounds like a "been there, done that, bought the 't' shirt" story - no wonder you're a pro.  Now, with all your years of experience, you'll have to explain about the blow dryer, as you're the first one to mention that particular item.

[Hyderabadi]

I never said anyone I know nor I used a blow dryer..!  

So no personal experience to explain.  

It just rhymed and seemed like a reasonably possible appliance for getting at that wet/damp spot and expedite (the impatient) one's exit from the bathroom.  

Besides, it gives one something to do, right?!  

[priya]

Ahhh - I thought when you were at the amateur stage the blow-dryer was a useful piece of equipment.  However,  considering your professional status, I realize this is incorrect.  My humble apologies for jumping to conclusions.  worthy.gif   1.14K   0 downloads

[Hyderabadi]

Humbly accepted!        

[jyoti]

A blow dryer!!  Hey, that's an idea!    ... and much easier to carry around with me than spare TP.   Maybe one of those little battery operated fans. I could keep it in the bottom of my purse easily enough. hahahaha.

[jyoti]

Okay, totally off topic (well, not totally, but...)  But i have to tell someone.  My latest milestone: squatty potty in a sari, baby!  Boo-yah.

[dzibead]

Gautam's post about people coping with extremely tough conditions made me think of my time in Sikkim on my last trip to India.  Traveling on the roads North Sikkim in the early morning, I saw children leaving for school, coming out of what can only be described as hovels, in perfectly clean and tidy school uniforms, looking as neat as little pins.  I don't know how they did it.  It was only October when I was there, but there was no heat in the guesthouses I was staying in, apart from a stove or open fire in the kitchen, and it was already getting pretty chilly at night.  A lot of the houses were less substantial than the places I was staying and just thinking about what it would be like there in the dead of winter made my teeth chatter.  When I look around me and realize what I have, it makes me embarassed.