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To Pee Or Not To Pee


If the heading seems awkward, think how it actually came into a writer’s mind! Well it’s not a big or as strange a story as it may appear. If you are an Indian you wouldn’t fail to notice how our open flowing drains and dark corners of any pathway has been a toilet for men in urge, throughout the decades. Or, let’s say since one can remember. Quite a spectacular view it makes under broad day light, men happily relieving themselves wherever they feel like. May not be so spectacular, because we are used to it! Think about the visitors. Tourists. Now, does it seem awkward? Well, it should. Since we are all used to the phenomenal practice of men peeing wherever they feel like, it doesn’t mean we have to live with it till the end of time. But the public toilets that are built around our cities, let’s come down to Kolkata itself, are pay and use. While some are free, maybe that’s the reason the stench reaches you a mile before you cross it. They are still unable to cure the male urinary bladders trying to blast off just around the corner. It may sound like a chauvinistic view from a feminist, but how will a person react if he/she comes face to face with an irony, like, a man peeing on the wall just outside a public toilet!  Arguments can be that, he ran out of change to pay, for pay and use. Then another fact can be that if he at all intended to use the public lavatory, he would have known that when you run out of change or coins, they anyway let you use the toilet.
See, that was the whole point behind this. Indian men just do not intend to use a public toilet which is more private than giving a peek-a-boo of their, you know what, to any passerby. The back walls of any public building, public hospital, government offices, the corners of sidewalks, and even the walls beside the busiest metro stations are all stained. The smell and the view, 2-3 men standing in a row doing their rightful business, can easily nauseate any healthy person. Even then I believe not a single person have vomited seeing or smelling (read- tolerating the smell). And why so? Simple. We’re used to it. Accustomed. Habituated. Grown up seeing it. The real spectacle would be to see those depository banks of urine, cleaned up and never get back to that fate again.
Am I promoting Swatchh Bharat Abhiyan! Not exactly. Just trying to bring to the kind notice of the male species of human race in India, specially Kolkata, that peeing should actually be a private and hygienic practice. While I tried my best to hurt the male ego with all this, another attempt would be a question:
Have you ever seen a woman peeing by the roadside or at the corner of a sidewalk or near the drains or just happily relieving herself while ten thousand people pass her by? It won’t really hurt to consider some civic sense.

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