The filthiest task.
Journalist and blogger Annie Zaidi has this cover story in Frontline about manual scavenging. The practice is rooted in caste:
“Martin [Macwan] describes in detail some traditional practices designed to keep bhangis in their place,” writes [Mari MarcelThekkekara], explaining the bhangi women’s routine of begging for food every day along with their children. “Appropriate behaviour has to be learned. The correct tone, the suitably humble stance, the posture of the supplicant. The bhangi mother has to ensure, to teach her children that they must never, ever, even accidentally, touch the upper-caste person…”From Thottiyute Makan (”Scavenger’s Son”) by Thakazhi Sivasankaran Pillai:
The midwife said:Also see this and this, at The Other India, and this post, from Annie’s blog:“Here, hold the child.”
Chudalamuthu’s hand froze. An old woman who came out, said:
“You must give 10 chakras before taking the child.”
Chudalamuthu came back with ten chakras. But he was fearful of taking the child in his hands. He was a Thotti. He had to hold the child with the hands that cleared toilet-filth!
Yet he had to do it. He held out his hand and took the child. And gave it back immediately.
Chudalamuthu had never felt such an aversion at being a Thotti as he did that day. That baby might have also been feeling the aversion. Can it know the stink? A Thotti stinks even if he takes a bath. Will the child have problems because I touched it? He should grow up without touching a Thotti. Even so, when he gave the child to other hands, Chudalamuthu felt like holding him again.
If their mothers don’t induct them into scavenging, their mothers-in-law do. Or their husbands do. If their husbands are also scavengers, they will often work together. For instance, the man, using a stick, will un-clog the gutter into which the shit is flushed. The woman will pick it up and carry it in baskets.To think that we let it happen.The filthiest task is left to the woman, wherever possible.
I remember Mary Oliver’s poem:
In Singapore, in the airport,The whole thing here.
a darkness was ripped from my eyes.
In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.
A woman knelt there, washing something
in the white bowl.Disgust argued in my stomach
and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.A poem should always have birds in it.
Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.
Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.
A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain
rising and falling.
A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.When the woman turned I could not answer her face…
This was stomach churning to read. I hadn’t realised that this shockingly horrible practice was still alive to this extent.
(Aside — That’s a poem I’ve liked for ages, the one that intro-d me to Mary Oliver, even though I can’t really recall any other single poems of hers. Thought it was interesting how you made that connection.)
Comment by Sharanya — September 23, 2006 @ 4:54 am
I read your words. I followed all the links and read them.
I sat with everything I learned over a two day period.
And, I am still left speechless.
What I can say to you and to the other writers is:
Thank you for expanding my world, showing me how others lives and surivive, how it can be in a way I did not know how to imagine.
I thank you for the education.
Kim
Comment by Kim — October 4, 2006 @ 9:41 pm
Yes… some of us would be left with poems and rivers if the rest of us did not keep sensationalizing a profession.
Nurses, doctors, scientists and all kinds of people come across disgusting situations in their occupation. There is no need to make an issue out of it.
Excretion is not disgusting. By trying to represent her job as dealing with disgusting things, you are only making life tougher for her. You are projecting the idea that toilet-cleaning is a disgusting thing to do.
We all have it under our skins. We all have shit under our skins. We all can clean shit and see shit-cleaners as normally occupied. It is not a big issue.
Writing a poem out of it, like it is a big issue, is shittier!
Comment by Phoenix — October 8, 2006 @ 5:13 pm
Yes… some of us would be left with poems and rivers if the rest of us did not keep sensationalizing a profession.
Nurses, doctors, scientists and all kinds of people come across disgusting situations in their occupation. There is no need to make an issue out of it.
Excretion is not disgusting. By trying to represent her job as dealing with disgusting things, you are only making life tougher for her. You are projecting the idea that toilet-cleaning is a disgusting thing to do.
We all have it under our skins. We all have shit under our skins. We all can clean shit and see shit-cleaners as normally occupied. It is not a big issue.
Writing a poem out of it, like it is a big issue, is shittier!
Comment by Phoenix — October 8, 2006 @ 5:24 pm