A recurring image: I am on a platform at one of Mumbai’s several suburban train stations, looking for a bathroom. I am a young reporter, on...
A recurring image: I am on a platform at one of Mumbai’s several suburban train stations, looking for a bathroom. I am a young reporter, one who is out “in the field” for most of the day, six days a week. I am meant to cover the sessions courts, or the city’s public hospitals, and am constantly distressed at the lack of clean toilets.
I am middle-class, barely, and new to the city. I do not yet know that when you are desperate, you should just walk into any restaurant or fancy hotel to use the toilet. I don’t yet have the confidence. I am afraid of picking up diseases in the public hospitals. I have money and time enough only to eat and travel publicly, hurriedly, always on trains and buses that do not have toilets attached.
This afternoon, I am desperate and cannot wait to return to my office. I look for the nearest facility at the nearest station. Most of the women’s toilets are kept locked, lest the space be used for “undesirable” activities, by those who do not have the option of taking their undesirable selves to a hotel or a friend’s apartment, or even to a car....
