A bathroom of one’s own

          

  I had an exciting week, from the point of view of an intrepid researcher.

            On Sunday I went to observe the Literature Festival in its second year in Banaras/Varanasi. Because it is run pointedly by non-literature people, it’s called “LitFest” as its official name. In a gigantic spaceship of an auditorium, it featured the typical examples of pomp and show: huge signboards; decorative displays made with flowers and rangoli; lavish praises and reports of awards to thus and so; a line of artists all similarly outfitted in aprons, easels and Camlin tubes of paints; everything that proclaims “Government” and “money.” I do not mention the memorablia about the present Ministers and their achievements. There were some lackadaisical stalls of crafts and I think I glimpsed one of books. Notable by their absence were students from Banaras’s four universities and fourteen colleges, freelance writers and scholars, and general lovers of literature. The crowd was thin and mostly attached to the few people on the dais. Enlivening the event were musairas, our lovely indigenous poetry slams, dances, and music performances. The panel I was on was scheduled at 5 pm, had not started at 8, and took place at some time afterwards but I wouldn’t know because I left.

            I had to go to the bathroom in my three hours’ visit there. It was like an Indian airport terminal’s: lavish in tiles and poor in engineering: the stalls had wet floors.

            On Tuesday I went to a village 35 kilometres away to observe a teachers’ training sponsored by a Lucknow NGO for senior village teachers. The school it was held in was a mess—it was being repaired, they said—but it was also simply dusty, with unswept floors, and dirty, with broken dustbins and overflowing garbage.

            When I had to use the bathroom, the hosts murmured “no” and “no,” shaking their heads at two choices, and then “Come to Principal madam’s room!” Principal madam, like all people in such positions in India, had a bathroom attached to her office. It had no water and barely a commode, but—I understood the meaning of “a bathroom of one’s own.”

            On Wednesday I took a colleague for a long visit and coffee on the ghats of Varanasi. So beautiful, so wonderful—then we needed a bathroom. The café we spent a delightful hour in should have had something tolerable, but my friend returned from its door shaking her head. I then approached the counter of the nearest hotel we could walk into, and there, barely clean, was a possibility.

            Then we went to visit weavers, both at home and in their workplace. The streets were squishy with mud because it had just rained. All the signs of a poor locality proliferated all around. Their workplaces were crowded. Their homes were comfortable and they were outstandingly hospitable. But we looked at each other and exchanged a simple message, “No looking for a bathroom here.”

            On Thursday I went to observe a Workshop in BHU, now not only a Central University but an Institute of Excellence, with loads and loads of money to spend and, indeed, re-spend on corners, cornices, state-of-the-art computers and screens. So smart is everything that biology has been left behind.

            I asked to use the bathroom.

            The student volunteer conferred with the organiser. The organiser whispered to surrounding people. Keys were exchanged. I was escorted up one floor to the office—“the chamber”—of a professor.

            It had “a bathroom of one’s own.”