Private washroom, where nobody is waiting outside the door for their turn, is a privilege even in urban areas. Toilets are common, but a good flushing facility is still a rarity due to the acute water shortage in the Kathmandu Valley. However, for those who can afford to buy water in tankers from private suppliers, keeping the loo smelling fresh is probably not such a big issue. Checking Facebook posts or responding to torrents of twits from the comfort of the commode should then not be as big a deal as it appears to be.
When eyes are on the small screen and minds occupied with smart-alecky quips and retorts, it is easy to ignore scenes outside the window. In any case, toilets, even in modern houses, are often box-rooms fitted with artificial lighting, air-freshening appliances and exhaust fans. Little wonder, pictures and texts appear alluring on the small screen. Once upon a time, the phrase was the ‘call of nature.’ These days, it’s more like reporting for the morning routine.
Safe disposal of human waste is perhaps the greatest gift of modernity. That could be the reason Mahatma Gandhi once argued that sanitation was more important than independence. Had he foreseen a day when television would outnumber toilets and cellphones would sell more than water taps, he would have probably delayed the struggle for self-government in South Asia and paid more attention to improving hygiene in what is arguably the dirtiest region on the face of the Earth.
Rural hygiene has improved by leaps and bounds. Even in villages of Tarai-Madhesh, only the poorest of the poor now go to the fields to respond to the call of nature. There was a time when women of the house ate less in the morning in order to avoid the necessity of having to rush to the banks of river or ponds during daylight hours. Even then, construction of a toilet among families benefiting from remittances is much lower down the list. Cellphones to receive calls, televisions to check merchandises being advertised, and cement-floor houses to overcome the drudgeries of constant upkeep are often the primary concerns after food and clothing.
Unlike in North and East Asia, the tradition of turning human excreta into manure is not very common in South Asia. Few communities, Newar farmers of Kathmandu Valley for example, have practiced the skill of producing most easily available compost for centuries. However, it never caught on in hot and humid Tarai-Madhesh where even Newar settlers relied on cow dung, agricultural waste, and ashes before the arrival of chemical fertilizers. The morning waste is considered odious waste and excreted mostly in wastelands.
Autumnal colors
The season after monsoon rains is the greenest time of the year in Mithila when rice paddies wave to the gentle wind. Leguminous plants throb on high grounds. The lower levels are still marshy, wet or damp. In open spaces, fishes, finger millet or red chilies are spread to dry, emitting a mixture of odor impossible to describe. The only place left open for going to maidan— a somewhat appropriate euphemism for responding to the call of nature with a Lota (water-pot) in hand—would then be mango groves where fear of snakes kept one away from rat holes near bamboos and Siso trees. The banyans—Bar and Pipal—are sacred and out of bounds for mundane affairs. That left Jamoon berries. There perhaps is a reason these wild berries grow so tall and bear so much fruit!
The other tree that attracted almost as much attention as Bar and Pipal during autumn would be the flowering ones called Singhrar. Often in the evening, someone would go and sweep the shade of a Singhrar tree clean. Sometimes the floor would even be prepared with wet earth the day before. All this was done to receive the falling flowers in the night. Singhrar—Parijat in Sanskrit and Har Shringar in Hindi—flowers are never plucked from the branches. They become worthy of offering only after they have fallen to the ground.
Strange as it may seem, memories of the beginning of autumn in Mithila are mixed with the sight of green paddies, sound of birds swooping down on water bodies, odor of the drying fish, smell of rotting excreta coming from mango groves, and the scent of Singhrar flowers almost everywhere.
The remittance economy has transformed lifestyle. Mango groves are now much thinner. Bamboos have begun to disappear. Shorter rice plants ripen early. Many fields remain fallow. And for those that do not have toilets, elevated ground along the road is a more convenient spot for Nikash, another euphemism for defecation.
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The number of Singhrar trees is also dwindling. But the familiar flower and its scent are still powerful enough to ignite autumnal thoughts. In cultures of colder climes, autumn is a time of incipient decline. In the climate of temperate zones, days before the onset of winter are joyous with green fields, blue skies, bright days and starry nights.
This is the time when Singhrar flowers fall on the ground during the night. Only elderly women, young children and aged men were considered fit to pick these tiny white flowers from the ground. Men and women of productive age kept a distance from the aphrodisiacal smell of puny blooms during the abstemious period of Tarpan (ritual offerings to ancestors) or Sorah Shraddha. Whites of Singhrar and Sorah Shraddha seem to the heart strangely related: Flowers appear like tears of joy of long-gone ancestors falling on the ground that they had walked ages ago.
The saying goes that let alone men that had sweated in humid fields during the monsoon, even bullocks are too tired in autumn to sleep in proper position. Both just fall flat in contentment of a job well done and possibilities of bumper crop. Singhrar aptly responds to the mood.
How did the ‘lion-like defiance’ of Singhrar come to be associated with a flower that looks so delicate? Perhaps it is just a shortened form of the Hindi term Har-Shringar, which means the Adornment of Shiva the Destroyer? Well, in that case, the lion-like defiance of the flower is probably apt.
The Sanskrit, and from there into Nepali, name Parijat for these flowers is melodious, but it lacks the power and authority intrinsic to the term Singhrar or even Har-Shringar. Singhrar connotes the pride of peasants. Har-Shringar carries the pleasure of princes in their palaces. Somehow, Parijat smells of the hubris of hermits. However, irrespective of the name, Singhrar is a flower that holds an appeal across class barriers.
Perhaps the best offerings for ancestors during autumnal Shraddha—sand, water, twigs and Singhrar flowers—are also the most appropriate ones.
Simple joys
In the materialistic world, possessions matter more than relationships. Religiosity seems to rise in direct proportion to acquisitiveness and consequent frustrations. Datedness is built into every novelty and every new possession creates the want for something newer and better. Occasions such as Eid, Deewali, Dushahara, various New Years and even Buddha Poornima match Christmas celebrations. That could be one of the reasons riots in Mujjafarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, suicide attack upon a church in Peshawar, and shootings in a Kenyan Mall target people of different faiths: The ‘other’ is an usurper for the ones who want more.
The mystic poet Kabir was so spiritual that he could openly taunt all organized religions terming one kind of God deaf and another deity merely a stone. However, his most mystical allusion perhaps is the boat of stone, which would not float and sink guru and disciple together. Lives are spent building and stocking boats of stone when all one needs is a kind heart and a song to sail through the world.
Emails, Facebook posts and tweets do not reach ancestors suspended in the Pitrilok—the resting place between the destinations of life and death. In some interpretations of the Sanatana Dharma, heaven and hell are here on earth, and every death is merely a preparation for rebirth. Those who travel light have more comfortable journey. And when they arrive, they fall softly like Singhrar flowers on the ground.
Lal contributes to The Week with his biweekly column Reflection. He is one of the widely read poliitical
analysts in Nepal.
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