The hand-held faucet should have been invented by a kind person.
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Growing up, I was taught that the greatest invention that changed the world was the wheel. Nearer life’s exit door, I know that the wheel has serious competition.
Recently, I had to visit the restroom in a public place. As you get older and everything travels south, these visits are no respecter of time or place.
When you have to go, you have to go.
A few minutes after I had slipped the bolt, I realised that the dark, damp and dingy 4’x4’ hole-in-the-wall had no hand-held health faucet. What I did have was a bucket with stagnant muddy water and a rusty dipper that had a distinctly defiant “take it or leave it” air about it.
Pre-faucet days
My memory has blurred and mercifully blocked out the gory details of the pre-faucet days when we had to hoist up six yards of starched cotton saris during squats, even as we held the pleats between the chin and the sternum to get both hands free.
Success was getting the water from the bucket to the anatomy using the dipper without slipping, spilling, or messing up the sari or petticoat. Now imagine this on a moving train!
Then one morning a kind person, who loves his mother, sister or daughter dearly, designed a hand-held faucet — a distant cousin of the French bidet.
Indian women have blessed him daily and never looked back even as they forgot him.
Till they are trapped in a toilet without one.
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