Holding It

Adventures in India
Part II

Most people, on average, spend an hour and forty-two minutes each week in the bathroom. That’s ninety-two days over the course of a lifetime. Pretty bleak statistic, huh? And I’m sure my numbers will be even higher than that seeing as I have quite possibly the smallest bladder on the planet. Needless to say, I’m pretty familiar with bathrooms. I can tell you the locations of the bathrooms in pretty much every mall, airport, movie theatre, concert venue, bar, restaurant and grocery store I’ve ever been to. I can even tell you what to expect once you’re there. I know bathrooms. Now, as a frequent bathroom attendee, I have a few specific requirements about my bathrooms. I don’t expect to be blinded by the sparkling porcelain or be knocked out by the fumes of disinfectant. That would be nice, but in most cases, I know better than to hope for that. No, my expectations for a bathroom are pretty simple: 1) I expect privacy, and 2) I expect toilet paper. Privacy is usually a given, but toilet paper can be a little trickier. Still, I’m a stickler for the toilet paper. I’d rather ‘hold it’ and suffer than pee without paper. I don’t ‘drip dry.’ But that’s just me. (And if you think that’s too much information, you might want to stop reading here.)

Privacy and paper. Those are my only demands, but after two weeks in India, I discovered another item to add to the list: A toilet. Well, perhaps I should say, a ‘Western toilet.’ Now, I like to think of myself as pretty well-traveled, but until India, I had never seen (nor heard of) an Eastern toilet. It was our first morning in Delhi and our driver, Manoj, had dropped us at a Hindu temple. We left our shoes at the door and wandered around the various buildings in the complex, trying to figure out the true meaning of the swastika (a Hindu symbol long before the Germans claimed it), when suddenly, I felt nature calling. So after finishing our self-guided tour of the temple, we went to the exit and retrieved our shoes. The four of us headed to the temple gardens and I told the others to go on without me while I found the ladies room.

I found the facilities without issue, but stopped abruptly at the stall door. There was no toilet. In fact there was little more than a white hole in the ground. On either side of the hole was a kind of built in tread, a place to steady your feet while you squat over the hole, and next to the hole was a faucet, kind of like the ‘sprayer’ attached to your kitchen sink. I briefly wondered what it was for, but I didn’t stick around to ask questions (the lack of toilet paper or dispenser might have offered a clue). I slowly backed away. The Lonely Planet had failed to prepare me for this. I bumped into Darby on my way out.

“That bad huh?” she asked, reading my face.
“I think I’ll hold it,” I muttered.
“Gross?”
“It’s like…not even a toilet!”
Darby poked her head into the stall to see for herself. She quickly joined me outside.
“I can hold it too.”

I did not have the foresight to take a photo of the Eastern toilet. I found this photo online, but I assure you, it looks much nicer than any of the 'toilets' that I saw in India.


Now, generally I make an effort to embrace the culture of wherever I am. When in Rome, right? But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t! So it was with great relief, four hours later, that I sat down on the toilet in the Lodi gardens restaurant. I decided I would limit my peeing in India to hotels and touristy restaurants.

But that’s not entirely practical. Especially for a frequent pee-er such as myself. The very next day, at the Lotus temple, Darby and I found ourselves desperate to use the bathroom. We found the restrooms and opened the stall to find the standard hole in the ground. I moaned, trying to rate exactly how badly I needed to go. We were about to get on the road to Agra so it would be several hours before we stopped again. Could I wait? But Darby was desperate. She took a tissue from her purse (always the Girl Scout) before shoving the bag at me. “Hold this,” she muttered. “I’m going in.”

She emerged a minute later and said nothing. “Well?” I asked.
“I coped. It’s fine if you really need to go…”

And I did need to go, but I wasn’t so sure. I tried to picture how I would pull my pants down and squat without a) letting my pants fall in the pee that would inevitably be on the floor, or b) peeing on my own pants! I’m just not that coordinated. And of course my clothing wasn’t exactly optimal for squatting over a hole in the ground. I took one look at my flowy pants and gauzy black sweater and knew that I had no chance of using that would-be toilet without dragging my ensemble through the pee, or worse, I suddenly had a vision of my flip flops slipping out from under me as I attempted to stand from the squatting position. The image of me head first in an Eastern toilet was enough to confirm my decision. No thank you. How do these Indian women do it? Of course, it did occur to me that the Indian women might be disgusted at the prospect of a Western toilet. The idea of letting the bare skin on the back of your thighs touch a ‘seat’ shared with thousands of other women is kinda gross, I guess. It’s just what you’re used to, I suppose. Still, go ahead and call me prissy, but I’m just not used to a hole in the ground.

“I can hold it,” I muttered as I watched my brave sister wash her hands.

Much to my dismay, I ended up ‘holding it’ all over India. If not to avoid the Eastern toilet, then because I didn’t have the requisite ten Rupees in my pocket to give the ‘bathroom attendant’ (read: female beggar that guards the toilet and hovers over you until you give her money). I’ve never been so stressed about peeing in my life! But that’s travel for you – it’s not always comfortable. Sometimes it’s downright miserable, but it does make you appreciate the simple things.

Like toilets!

So now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the ladies room, for now that I’m back in South Africa, I don’t have to ‘hold it’ any longer.


I realize that it’s a bit ridiculous that after two weeks in India, this is the first thing I share. What can I say? I have no control over when and why I’m inspired. This week, it was bathrooms. Maybe next week I’ll have something more meaningful for you...