When they learnt Scatology in Shencottai

In the beginning there was no word. No one swore, “Whatdeshit ya!”

The wise sages of the time did not wonder how certain evolved tribes, they would later call their forefathers, settled in Mohenjodaro and built sewers and drains. They were unaware of archaeologists who would pore over the dust of excavated houses to marvel at the private baths and toilets that stood among the ruins of a former city in the Indus Valley. Back then maharajas had slaves to clean up their royal thunder boxes. The wise men of yore had no clue that history books and encyclopedias would inform that the ancient Romans, who came later after the settlers near the Hindukush, would build common toilets of stone and alabaster perches that would later lead to the habit of communal Roman baths.

The gentle people of this story had no clue about future years too. Of toilet summits that would be held in the western world on global human waste disposal patterns and environment foot prints; or European self-help groups campaigning for ’rural Bangladesh to build dry toilets’. They knew not that battles would erupt over the efficacy of the WC versus the ST;our squat is cleaner than their flush spray;our sphincter is well-oiled because the Indian way is better;comparisons of water as a solvent over microbial carriers through paper;health issues of children and women and vaccinations for the Third World. Our young men sailing seas and entering foreign worlds for prosperity and knowledge would  quaver and recoil before rolls of paper tissue, while their blond backpacking bretheren, looking for mysteries in this ancient land of ours, would be flummoxed by plastic mugs and buckets for a wash of the posterior with bare hands.

“Eugh! But we use the left hand for the express purpose only; but I am left-handed. Paper on keister is yucky. Recycled paper does not kill trees. We fertilise the trees. I hate Naipul  for dismissing his motherland where he could see the squatting masses but not the great levels of prosperity and modernity. The flush is not working. Amma, yennaku varudu. We must never use diapers. Chi.A matter of shame. Oh, how can they? Do igloos have ensuite loos?”

Shencottai’s citizens did not fathom that a century later, installation art of virteous china by a brooding artist would be hailed as a, `metaphor on the existential waste of our modern lives’. Or renegade rock stars would sing of a Turd on the run, while Ivy League scholars would disseminate the transgressive nature, violence and humour of public lavatory scrawls and graffiti on toilet walls. That old gender war that became public amidst Victorian prudishness in London (’Thank you Sir Bernard Shaw for expressing solidarity for building separate toilets for ladies in public-The Westminster Catholic Ladies Foundation or some such)  would be revisited and objections would be raised when post modern architects designed public urinals like a woman’s mouth in America ( ‘Growl! How many toilets will be annihilated if we blow up the Twin Towers?’). Hollywood beauties like Julia Roberts and Cate Blanchett would not flinch from wiping their peach derrieres, perched on the toilet for the camera (’Cinema reflects life dahlings, mwah!’).Bourgeois toilet aesthetics including fancy china, bidet, auto flush, book rack, reading the newspaper were unthought of not even by their soothsayers who were always prophetic.

For the simple folk of Shencottai it meant the act of explusion of waste from the anatomy. It was an unspoken accompaniment to the quiet waking of the dawn, a biological need and indifferent response to the first bird call, the early morning’s delicate breeze and the sibilant ripple of the silent river, whose bank, bramble and bush served as toilet bowls. Here master and serf, maiden and matron, would arrive, furtive and silent, swinging an empty shombu they would fill with the river’s waters before retiring to a spot for their morning emission.

Shencottai’s beauty had a rustic picturesque quality to it. Flanked by Coutrallam’s Five-Falls in the neighbourhood, the dark outlines of the Western Ghats, the catchment areas of Manimuthar, Papanasam and Servalar, it was a place blessed with water and bounteous green that those residing in Tirunelveli town were not privy to.Its dialect was a mix of Malayalam cadence and Tamil expressions,  result of a misplaced colonial mapping expert who drew the state’s borders where the boundaries   merged and tongues mingled.It was a happy place of verdant beauty and sweet sounding people.

The dense vegetation had its uses for the little colony that frequented it to coincide with the first rays of the sun. The elders would look away glazed when trespassers trampled the grass to come upon their moments of elimination. Children who giggled were frowned upon. Maamis warned pretty lasses to cover their faces with the thalapu when they espied male foot stomps (’ Cover your faces and you can’t be recognised only by your bottoms’).

“Shh, be careful of snakes or scorpions”, those who knew details of the story warned relatives and children as they led them out in the morning. These days many came in armed with a twig along with the shombu. Groups and parties were the norm and visitors were encouraged to sing (”That Suddhasaveri alapanei was a beauty, Kicha”, bramble called out to boulder). Loud discussions recollecting in detail ‘Nagarajan’s Serpentine Squat’ tale and his subsequent support for laxatives recommended by Ayurvedic practitioners from Kerala formed the crux of the conversations.

The tale of Nagarajan, whose footfalls would bring everyone on the streets to click their heels, bring tears to the eyes of his fragile daughters and make young lads shiver on their naked feet became a scatalogical legend. He held an important post of a sub-registrar at the Thoothukudi Government Port Trust, assured of a pension from the imperial coffers and was lorded over by a colonial master. 

The fount of the river that was lush and craggy marked for the twice-born of the colony was Nagarajan’s chosen area. However one morning a wandering reptile shattered the peace.It snaked its way  silently through the grass to stop before Nagarajan. He had frozen, his terrified eyes locking gaze with cold reptilian eyes. A shout remained locked in the deep recesses of his throat that his lungs did not bellow forth. The silly snake, in a moment of unreptilian warmth and whim, coiled at the gentleman’s left foot and lay in a kind of stupor, its tail touching the squatter’s toe. Nagarajan’s rectum recoiled and he sat iced-up, a silent prayer begging deliverance.

A good hour later Madhavan, the young tyke, had come bounding by to pick his spot to chew on a blade of grass as part of his morning ablutions. He stopped short before Nagarajan, his grand neighbour, who regularly insulted him for not taking up a job with Her Majesty’s Services and opting to be modern to take up job as an English teacher at St.Xavier’s College. Little did he know that Madhavan’s heart beat silently for Nagarajan’s daughter, Gomathi ( the country cousins called her Komadhi) who was pursuing her Intermediate studies at Sarah Tucker college, making them cross paths ever so often in Palayamkottai where their two colleges were located. 

A dry croak erupted from Nagarajan’s parched lips and his eyes indicated at the pendulous coil about his feet. Quick to the call, Madhavan  had plucked a twig and deftly yanked the limp snake off Nagarajan maama’s foot and tossed it into the dense green. He was, for Nagarajan’s tired limbs and thudding heart, quite the hero of the hour. The agraharam residents were surprised when Nagarajan consented to his wife’s wishes that Gomathi would wed Madhavan in the months that followed.   

Like a true gentleman, Madhavan had never discussed the serpent incident with anyone until after his marriage when he  proudly narrated the story to his young wife on how he had won her churlish father’s approval. But he did not know that the lovely ladies of Shencottai were not known to keep a secret. Soon the oral narrative went around with embellishments, the serpent’s species turned dangerous according to the venom of the narrator, and Nagarajan’s stature dimmed. In the thinnai pallikoodam, a makeshift classroom in the front of large homesteads, language teachers, initiating consonants through alliteration made the students repeat by rote, “Nagarajar nagapaambu nakki natratil nadungi nindraar”.

Poor Nagarajan’s nates had been whacked since that moment and he suffered from constipation for the rest of his life.Madhavan was ingenious enough to borrow an imperial contraption and build the first porcelin floor toilet in Shencottai at the farthest corner of his backyard a few years later. Nagarajan had a squatting invitation to partake of the amenity any day, any time of the year.

What more could a man want from a generous son-in-law?