www.thehindu.com December 20th, 2014
Women working
outdoors in a male-dominated country give the concept of sanitation a
very personal twist. Village women working in the fields are at least in
a familiar environment, which even then may have a million hidden
dangers. But for me, most of my women friends, and all those other women
in various sectors who spend long hours on the road or in villages,
fields and forest lands, finding a secluded, safe, spot to commune with
nature, is an art.
Well, if the day is
something like this — ‘heading to the field for two days, six-hour drive
to reach the village, three hours in village plus neighbourhood,
three-hour drive to rest house, one-hour meeting at rest house’ — how it
translates in one’s head is: ‘hell, six-hour drive — will need to find
two p-spots; better check with Meeta, she’d gone on that drive last
time, she’ll be able to suggest something. Need some background on the
village meeting. Hope there are trees en route. Hope it’s a real NBA
village, else, hope the harvest isn’t in yet.’
Women definitely
multi-think, no choice there. On regular routes one can even mark safe
spots, although no spot is ever really safe, as tales of encounters with
cattle and curious goats, or the occasional nettle plant, abound.
A multitude of women
friends and colleagues — development workers, faculty, students and
government officials who work in the field — have perfected the art of
not drinking any liquids for up to 12 hours before the trip, and not
needing the loo at all. Personally, I don’t think that works, and
suspect it promotes UTIs. But if you’re the kind who says, what the
hell, I need my fluids and I will go where I need, then one pretty much
falls into the tiny category of women who are ostracised even by other
women in the group. The hierarchy of ‘those who dare to go’ vs ‘those
who hold it’ is subtle but very real. The general feeling is that the
one who ‘goes’ has a thicker skin and an unlady-like gung-ho attitude.
Thankfully, many men with whom one works do not melt with embarrassment
if one needs to stop the car, and I’ve had a few sweet enough to mention
wife and daughters and the problems of long rides — bless them.
On the other hand,
there are always a few who turned away and died small deaths when one
suggested finding a safe nook. The plus is that over the years, long
drives on major routes have become much easier — even in northern India,
where loos are usually terribly maintained.
Dhabas, in
particular, have over the past few years woken up to the particular
needs of women travellers, and have progressed from a corner of a field
curtained off by filthy rags hanging a foot off the ground, to
relatively clean, not-so-smelly toilets.
But in many regions there continues to be no chance of either cover or vegetation. Some areas have their unique characteristics. Once, a group of us
women, working on a book, met up in Mongolia. The hosts took us for a
day trip to a village, a few hours drive out of Ulan Bator. I fell
deeply in love with the country, it’s so amazingly beautiful and full of
beautiful people. But there is this thing about it — it’s the flattest
piece of land one has ever seen. It’s flat, flat, flat, like a tabletop,
with a foot-high, thin grass cover in late summers. It was inevitable
that sooner or later someone had to go. The problem was, there was no
cover, or camouflage, and we were in a bus on that tabletop.
That’s when,
following an intensely hilarious discussion we figured out why
traditionally, in most regions, women wear large, long skirt-based
dresses — Mongolia, China, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Egypt.
Skirts were the way to go. Even in Europe, it used to be skirts. Women
could have only begun wearing trousers after sanitation systems came
into being. And we all wore trousers, or some version thereof, at that
point. The men at the meeting never did quite figure out why the women
bonded so strongly during that visit.
Thankfully, things
have been getting easier, Swachh Bharat or not. Hopefully our daughters,
when they are travelling alone in buses in the remote corners of the
country, or trekking across the deserts of Rajasthan as we did, will
find safe corners when they need them. And, like us, they find men and
women who are of the creed who understand and hold guard while they
‘go’. I hope my son grows up to be genuinely understanding of the
problems a woman friend might face in the great outdoors. A helpful taxi
driver, a decent colleague — people simply being nice makes life so
much easier. Of course, they could get too nice too.
Years ago just after
my marriage, on a trip through Rajasthan with my husband and a bunch of
his very ‘happy’ all-male friends in a very crowded Maruti 800 the
inevitable moment came. An animated discussion ensued, followed by the
car screeching to a halt by the roadside. I had to tell the driver (and
obviously everyone else too) that some ‘cover’, as in, roadside
vegetation, would be required, which in Rajasthan, is not the simplest
thing.
A comical 20 minutes
followed, with heads sticking out of windows and guys pointing out
various completely unsuitable ‘cover’, from the ubiquitous tall and thin
eucalyptus that uselessly line some roads, to thorny bushes and garden
hedges, beyond which there were, obviously, gardens and houses and
people. Helpful comments of ‘just go, we aren’t watching’ didn’t work
then, though they might now. With age, some things in life really do
become so much easier. kafalpaako@gmail.com
