TOILET MONOLOGUES
Is there anybody who does not like to relish the steaming hot headlines of the morning newspaper while answering nature’s call every morning in their bathrooms? Bathrooms and toilets, at home or outside, always bring out a different person in us, and at times it surfaces the real uninhibited self in us. At home it turns a shy introvert into a Abhijeet Sawant (bathroom singer) and outside, it brings out the real devil in an otherwise good civilized man. After all, we all have wondered that who writes and draws the innumerable vile abuses and graphically depicted private parts of male and female anatomy on walls of public toilets. The most noteworthy aspect about this crude graffiti is that we all condemn the writer without knowing who he is, although he might quite possibly be the man peeing right beside us. Also, we read those words and then, either get disgusted or simply laugh them off, but not once do we ever feel that the abuses might have been directed towards us, and not anybody else, by some unknown enemy of ours.
In my school life, the school toilet used to be the unofficial ‘conference room’ where everything, from the game plan of an inter-school football match to the routine for exam preparations, was extensively discussed and debated. It was the Mecca of unscrupulous students who brought chits to the examination hall but lacked the guts to cheat right under the invigilators nose. There was least risk of a surprise check by the Principal in the toilet so it was our favourite and safest place to bunk the utterly boring chemistry period. And how can we ever afford to forget that the first abuse we ever came across, and the first thing that sparked our curiosity about the untaught and taboo was not from a foul mouthed roadside urchin or an ill-mannered senior or a bold feature film, but it was from these obscure and intriguing words and pictures drawn on the walls of our school toilet that had put our tender minds and imaginations to work overtime. The blacklisted and notoriously mischievous students of my school sometimes burnt noisy fire crackers inside the toilet that would shake the whole school building. In our school lives, although the toilet was the den of all wrong and mischievous activities, it was also unmistakably the most effective destress zone for the students. To be really true, it wasn’t a mere “toilet” but a "surrogate classroom" where students read, learnt and scribbled all that was condemned and criticized by the ‘actual classroom’.
It does seem that the sight of a public toilet wall surfaces the pent up frustration and restlessness of unfulfilled desires in people and they, being unable to contain the dissatisfaction inside any longer, unleash their anger and incivility on the walls by scribbling the vilest of abuses. The abuses ain’t directed towards anybody in particular because the writers themselves don’t know whom to blame exactly for their problematic lives, unending miseries and unfulfilled dreams. It is believed that even sex helps in releasing the bottled up frustration, helplessness, stress and anxiety in a person, but all that the sex-starved Indian middle class and lower middle class are left to do, is to vent their repressed ill feelings through spoiling public property - by crude provocative drawings and filthy abuses on the walls of public toilets, damaging the seats of trains and buses, spitting on freshly painted walls, and tearing leaves and grass in well maintained public parks. Since they have been unable in achieving what they pined for, the suffering proletariats derive sadistic pleasure by destructing public property and other’s belongings. Although, the walls of the public toilets portray the bourgeois society’s declining moral code of conduct but nonetheless, the writers are people belonging very much from among us, who have just become disillusioned of the system, the judiciary, the ineffective five year plans, and false promises of the politicians, and therefore have resorted to such crude methods, out of sheer desperation, to make themselves heard. The walls of these toilets continually scream out aloud to us about the comman man’s distress and agony, and in “speechless MONOLOGUES” try to convey to us, the PRIVILEDGED DEAF, the frustration stemming from their helplessness.
My school authorities did exactly what the present day 'sulabh-shauchalayas' struggling to tackle the same “graffiti” problem have done. They put floor-to-ceiling tiles to ensure the stoppage of any further scribbling, and thereafter made the walls of our school toilet mute and speechless forever.
BY : SHUBHRO SEN
In my school life, the school toilet used to be the unofficial ‘conference room’ where everything, from the game plan of an inter-school football match to the routine for exam preparations, was extensively discussed and debated. It was the Mecca of unscrupulous students who brought chits to the examination hall but lacked the guts to cheat right under the invigilators nose. There was least risk of a surprise check by the Principal in the toilet so it was our favourite and safest place to bunk the utterly boring chemistry period. And how can we ever afford to forget that the first abuse we ever came across, and the first thing that sparked our curiosity about the untaught and taboo was not from a foul mouthed roadside urchin or an ill-mannered senior or a bold feature film, but it was from these obscure and intriguing words and pictures drawn on the walls of our school toilet that had put our tender minds and imaginations to work overtime. The blacklisted and notoriously mischievous students of my school sometimes burnt noisy fire crackers inside the toilet that would shake the whole school building. In our school lives, although the toilet was the den of all wrong and mischievous activities, it was also unmistakably the most effective destress zone for the students. To be really true, it wasn’t a mere “toilet” but a "surrogate classroom" where students read, learnt and scribbled all that was condemned and criticized by the ‘actual classroom’.
It does seem that the sight of a public toilet wall surfaces the pent up frustration and restlessness of unfulfilled desires in people and they, being unable to contain the dissatisfaction inside any longer, unleash their anger and incivility on the walls by scribbling the vilest of abuses. The abuses ain’t directed towards anybody in particular because the writers themselves don’t know whom to blame exactly for their problematic lives, unending miseries and unfulfilled dreams. It is believed that even sex helps in releasing the bottled up frustration, helplessness, stress and anxiety in a person, but all that the sex-starved Indian middle class and lower middle class are left to do, is to vent their repressed ill feelings through spoiling public property - by crude provocative drawings and filthy abuses on the walls of public toilets, damaging the seats of trains and buses, spitting on freshly painted walls, and tearing leaves and grass in well maintained public parks. Since they have been unable in achieving what they pined for, the suffering proletariats derive sadistic pleasure by destructing public property and other’s belongings. Although, the walls of the public toilets portray the bourgeois society’s declining moral code of conduct but nonetheless, the writers are people belonging very much from among us, who have just become disillusioned of the system, the judiciary, the ineffective five year plans, and false promises of the politicians, and therefore have resorted to such crude methods, out of sheer desperation, to make themselves heard. The walls of these toilets continually scream out aloud to us about the comman man’s distress and agony, and in “speechless MONOLOGUES” try to convey to us, the PRIVILEDGED DEAF, the frustration stemming from their helplessness.
My school authorities did exactly what the present day 'sulabh-shauchalayas' struggling to tackle the same “graffiti” problem have done. They put floor-to-ceiling tiles to ensure the stoppage of any further scribbling, and thereafter made the walls of our school toilet mute and speechless forever.
BY : SHUBHRO SEN
posted by Shubhro at 11:50 AM
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