Subj: FEATURE- Toilets make history in Indian museum
Date: 11:45 PM EDT
From: [log in to unmask]
By Sonali Verma
NEW DELHI, Dec 17 (Reuter) - When the curator of the world's
largest toilet museum asks you to take a seat, it is difficult
not to giggle.
But the Sulabh International Museum of Toilets, which greets
visitors with ferns sprouting from a toilet bowl at its main
entrance on the dusty outskirts of Delhi, takes the business of
bathrooms very seriously.
The museum chronicles the rise of the toilet from 2500 B.C.
to 1980, when the first ``auto-control'' toilet was installed.
From the humble chamber pot to the mighty septic tank, it tells
of the vital role that the bowl played in history.
``Toilets were the places where many a conspiracy was
hatched,'' a plaque on the wall says. ``Edward II was locked in
his...Toilets were the mirrors of fortune where chaplains
calculated how long it would take to become bishop; the income
and credit of a man depended on his method of defecation; they
were sites for rendezvous.''
Replete with models and photographs of ornately carved and
painted urinals and commodes, the museum is rich in toilet
literature, as poems extolling the virtues of human excrement
and exhorting readers to break wind adorn its walls.
``Suck your fingers, beast/Do not wipe them on the wall,''
reads a 19th century graffito.
A tall wooden bookcase in the corner is crammed with thin,
hard-bound volumes about latrines, waste disposal systems and
human excretory practices through history across the world.
That such a memorial exists in India, where many people ease
themselves behind bushes and on roadsides, may seem misplaced.
But the museum, part of a larger complex owned by the Sulabh
International Social Service Organisation, is located next to a
plant that generates fuel from human excrement and is sustained
by a string of public toilets along the main road outside.
In 1970 Sulabh -- Hindi for ``convenient'' -- set up India's
first pay toilets. The group's more than 650,000 public toilets
are now used by some 10 million people every day. This is part
of a social campaign to end sewage collecting.
Sulabh founder Bindeshwar Pathak says he has dedicated his
life to restoring human dignity to the 600,000 men and women who
earn their living by carrying nightsoil. The group, which runs a
school for their children, has already found new jobs for more
than 40,000 sewage collectors.
``I think the subject of the toilet is more important than
other social challenges like literacy and poverty, because a
lack of hygiene is a national health hazard,'' Pathak told Hong
Kong's International Symposium on Public Toilets in May.
The museum opened in March 1994 after Pathak, inspired by a
similar smaller museum in Austria, wrote to over 100 embassies
for historical details of toilets in their home countries.
Its red-carpeted inner room displays a model of Louis XII's
high-backed wooden throne which served as his toilet as well. A
note tells readers of a jester in the king's court who chided
him for ``eating alone and defecating in company.''
The king, along with Louis XIV, Henri IV's grandson and
Louis XIII, was among the many French rulers to hold court,
write letters and issue orders while seated there.
A modern American Portapotty rests on a glass table in a
corner, not far from a miniature west European mediaeval toilet
on a pedestal.
Two laminated boards, crowded with details of toilet-related
anecdotes and social customs, span the length of the narrow
room. They are surrounded by photographs and diagrams of water
closets, bidets and chamber pots from all over the world.
Queen Elizabeth I and James I had cushioned toilet-seats
decorated with lace. James V of Scotland spent a princely
fortune of 52 sterling on 15.5 yards of damask to cover his
bowl. Queen Victoria preferred gold and turquoise and Henry VIII
was partial to gold rivets set on black velvet.
The lavatory through the ages has been called the privy, the
convenience, the necessary room, the conscience for relieving
nature (in Japanese), the private chapel, the hiding hall, the
can, the john and the guardrobe.
Ancient Indians invented the first waste sewage system in
2,500 B.C. Six centuries later, Mesopotamians created flush
toilets fed by abundant river water. Latrines were also found
under the debris of Mount Vesuvius which erupted in 84 B.C.,
while Marco Polo in 1271 spoke of toilets in the Gobi Desert.
While 1st century Romans levied taxes on toilets and forced
the invention of a 20-person lavatory, France decreed it
mandatory in 1700 for all residents to build them or face
eviction, as did England in 1848 after a cholera epidemic.
Toilet art reached its zenith in the 18th century when faces
and eyes were drawn on the bottom of chamber pots. Merino wool
served as the toilet paper of the affluent while peasants had to
make do with pages torn from books, hemp -- and pebbles.
|
