The phenomenon that Indians like to relieve themselves outdoors has always puzzled the Chinese. People often ask: Is it so difficult to build a toilet? The truth is, your Chinese thinking limits your imagination of the amazing India, where building toilets is so hard!
Recently, a well-received Indian film "Toilet: A Story of Love" explained all the difficulties in it.
The film tells the story of a young man and woman from India who entered into a sweet marriage after free love. On the wedding night, the bride Jaye found that her husband's house had no toilet. Unable to bear the relief of being outdoors, she proposed to her husband Keshav that there must be a toilet, otherwise she can only divorce...
This reminiscent and magical story is not made up by Indians with big brains, but is adapted from real people . In 2012, Indian bride Anita Nally couldn't bear the torture of using the toilet outdoors. She fled from her husband's house on the fourth day after marriage, claiming that she would not go home without a separate toilet. After hearing the news, a charity built a toilet for her, and she returned home when the toilet opened.
The hero and heroine in the film were not so lucky. Not only did no charity help, but they also encountered huge obstacles. The first objection was Keshav's father, a devout Hindu.
Hinduism has a very paranoid concept of "cleanliness". For example, you must take off your shoes when you enter a temple, because shoes have stepped on the filth of the world and are regarded as unclean things. There is even a curse word in Hindi, which is literally translated: eat your shoes.
Treating shoes is so fierce, you can imagine the treatment of toilets! It's a place that others have dealt with, a place that contains other people's excrement, a place that smells of other people's excrement, how can Hindus who pay attention to cleanliness step into such a place?
At the same time, Indians feel that the outdoors is very clean, because they can freely choose a clean place and breathe fresh air.
So, it's not that Indians don't love cleanliness, but they love cleanliness too much, so they choose to relieve themselves outdoors , no matter how weird it sounds to you, but logically speaking, it is really okay.
By analogy, of course, it is impossible to build a toilet at home. How can such a dirty thing enter the house?
Moreover, when a toilet is built at home, it needs to be cleaned and cleaned regularly, especially the dry toilet in the past, which is equivalent to close contact with excrement. This is absolutely intolerable for Hindus, because in the Hindu caste system , cleaning excrement is the job of the untouchables.
Basically, Indians believe that only poor city dwellers have to get a toilet at home because they don't have wide fields to relieve themselves.
American journalist Miranda mentioned in the book "I Lived in India for Five Years" that she wanted to hire a cleaning servant, but due to the caste system, she had to hire two. The untouchable servants were responsible for cleaning the toilets, and the upper caste servants were responsible for cleaning the toilets. The maid is in charge of the rest of the room and is determined not to step into the toilet.
Indians' resistance to toilets is so stubborn.
Keshav's father was not only a devout Hindu, but also a country Brahmin with wide fields! So, you can understand why he reacted so violently when he heard that his son was going to build a toilet at home.
In India, the difficulty of building toilets is caused by culture and tradition, and it is never easy to change culture and tradition, not to mention religion is also involved. For believers, this is a practice that goes against their beliefs, plus thousands of years of experience. With the blessing of the years, it is no exaggeration to say that building a toilet in India is almost like kicking an iron plate.
However, things are far more complicated than this, as the connection between the caste system and toilets mentioned above, there are too many things involved. In this regard, the film highlights the impact between toilets and sexism.
Think about it, in a country where it's a big sin for women to wear short skirts, but let them go outside to relieve themselves? This is even showing a woman's lower body! Isn't it contradictory? Not contradictory, a religion that discriminates against women, why should it consider the plight of women?
To tell the truth, even in the most open country in the world, it is extremely shameful and unsafe for women to expose their genitals, not to mention India! So we see in the film that Indian women have to walk a long way to go to a remote place to relieve themselves, and they all travel together, and as far as possible at night.
The bride Jaye knew that her husband's house had no toilet at 4:00 a.m. on the night of her wedding, because the "Women's Federation" in the village, an organization that focuses on women's companionship outdoors all the year round, warmly invited her to join the organization.
Even so, there are still men passing by from time to time. If the quality is good, he will be embarrassed to avoid them. If the quality is bad, he will harass them. As shown at the beginning of the film, the man driving the car uses the headlights to illuminate the women in his hands to satisfy his voyeuristic desire. Of course, the most dangerous are those women who risk being alone to relieve themselves because they cannot travel in groups... Many rapes and murders happen when the victims are alone to relieve themselves. Voila! This is linked to another social ill in India - rape.
The bride Jaye was born into an open-minded family and was highly educated. She was a woman who hated sexism.
As soon as she appeared on the scene, she taught the hooligans who molested women on the road, and she and Keshav were all arguing about the topic of gender equality during the entire process from encountering to knowing each other and falling in love. Therefore, her persistence on the toilet issue is not only because of the living habits she has developed over the decades, but also because of the outdoor relief, which makes her deeply feel the sexism she hates the most.
After being separated from Keshav due to toilet problems, Jaye became distraught, and eventually her emotions exploded. She excitedly listed the various injustices faced by women in Indian society to a group of women who went outdoors to relieve themselves. But you can only compromise again and again, even to let go! Jaye's quick accusations made people instantly feel that India's gender discrimination is no less serious than the toilet problem.
Under the evolution of thousands of years, various evil habits and chronic diseases of Indian society have not only been deeply rooted, but also penetrated into each other, forming a solid and intertwined situation. As a result, when you want to change a bad habit, you have to resist not only the tradition and culture that created the bad habit, but all the traditions and cultures behind the other bad habits that intersect with it will show up to thwart it.
This phenomenon can best be reflected in Keshav's father, who kept switching among the three identities of believer, father, and man, and opposed Keshav for Jaye on the grounds of belief, patriarchy, and patriarchy. Building a toilet at home made the young couple devastated.
However, Keshav's father's reasons for obstruction are just the tip of the iceberg.
In the film, it is mentioned that nationalists are also resistant to toilets. Due to the humiliation of modern history, they refuse to accept all cultures from foreign countries.
As for what is not mentioned in the film, apart from the caste system mentioned earlier, how many reasons the complex Indian society has to obstruct the construction of toilets, I can't imagine.
It is worth noting that women, as the biggest victims of outdoor relief, did not actively fight for the construction of toilets, and even opposed the construction of toilets.
The first objector was Keshav's grandmother, who rushed to Jaye's family home and accused him of being ignorant because compromise is a traditional virtue of Indian women.
The second objection was to Jaye's mother, who criticized her daughter for making the housework known to everyone and making her husband lose face, which was detrimental to women's morality.
A third objection is to women who accept outdoor relief, with some saying Jaye shouldn't have sacrificed his marriage for the toilet, while others blaming Keshav for failing to discipline his educated wife.
Under the influence of thousands of years of sexist culture, the women who should come to oppose the outdoor relief have not consciously resisted, and even acted as a defender of sexism, as Jaye's father scolded, "You women are your own. enemy."
From another perspective, this reflects why it is difficult to build toilets in India, because the biggest beneficiary group not only does not fight for the construction of toilets, but also acts as the vanguard of obstruction.
Can you understand how difficult it is to build a toilet in India? Interestingly, the line "don't complicate simple things" appears more than once in the film, but the truth is, it's never been easy.
In fact, the Indian government has been working on the toilet issue. The new Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a toilet revolution as soon as he came to power. However, it is hard to say how effective it was. Just as the officials complained in the film, the people tried their best to resist the construction of toilets.
What’s more difficult than building toilets is persuading people to go to the toilet. In many cases, the government has made great efforts to build toilets by means of thunderbolts, but the people still choose to relieve themselves outdoors. In this way, things have returned to the original point. To change bad habits, we must first change the bad habits. The cultural tradition behind it, however it is really difficult to change the culture, especially the culture that involves religion!
In fact, it’s not just about getting rid of the problem outdoors, but many chronic diseases and bad habits in Indian society are difficult to eradicate. From a higher level, this film describing the difficulty of building toilets reflects the contemporary India, the predicament of moving closer to modern civilization, thousands of years of tradition and culture are wealth, but also fetters.
A survey released this year by the British "Economist" shows that the average "outdoor relief" population per hectare of various countries is much higher than that of other countries, including African countries that are considered to be the most backward. The number of "outdoor relievers" in India is as high as 200 per square hectare.
Countries all over the world are working to improve the problem of outdoor relief. From 2000 to 2015, the number of global outdoor relief has dropped from 1.229 billion to 892 million. On this year's "World Toilet Day", the international charity "Water Aid" announced According to the report of China, about 732 million people in India do not have toilets, which is the country with the largest number of people without toilets in the world . It can be seen that almost all the people who relieve themselves outdoors in the world are concentrated in India.
Is it ironic that someone has nicknamed India the world's largest outdoor toilet ? Hindus are so resistant to toilets that they have turned the entire country into a toilet. Obviously, the "clean" doctrine of Hinduism ignores the consideration of public environmental hygiene.
Although the film talks a lot about the toilet issue, there is no uncomfortable place, the picture is clean, and Keshav's love for Jaye is even more touching.
Keshav is not educated, simple, and thinks little, so he can bow down to his conservative and stubborn father to marry a cow, and he can also fall in love with Jaye, a new educated woman who likes to use expedients To solve problems, just seek harmony. But when his wife and father clashed head-on over toilet problems, his expediency didn't work. This is normal. You must know that finding an expedient solution in traditional culture and modern civilization is a dream that generations of Indian politicians have not been able to achieve.
So, between wife and father, between love and filial piety, Keshav chose wife and love.
For Keshav, he did not know so clearly and thoroughly what teachings, traditions, environmental sanitation and public concepts were. He only knew that to win back his wife's heart, he had to build a toilet. In order to build a toilet, He wants to fight against thousands of years of Indian culture. This is also the oath that Keshav made when he confessed to Jaye, "I decided to fight the world for you."
So far, the whole story has been firmly attached to the title of the movie - "Toilet: A Story of Love", building a toilet in the name of love. This kind of movie can only be made by Indians . It is very strange. But it is also very touching. A man who loves a woman and speaks hundreds of sweet words is not as good as doing a real thing for her.
It's a film about culture and vices, and a great love story.
A movie may not change a country or even a vice, but at least it guides. Moreover, the box office of this film exceeded 10 billion rupees (1 billion yuan) within two weeks of its release, and it has a great response in Indian society, indicating that many people are already thinking about the toilet issue.
At the end of the film, the Hindu master said with a little joy that he should write "human beings should not face the sun or the moon for convenience" into the scriptures. To tell the truth, maybe this really works. After all, the bell has to be tied. man!
For Chinese people, stop laughing at the toilet problem in India. We have also experienced the era of "blood to move a table", and judging from the recent frequent news of women in Durban, those who are considered to be turning over The story has been trying to revive.
——————————————————————————————————————————
For more reviews of Indian movies, please subscribe to the public platform "Indianmovie".
View more about Toilet: A Love Story reviews
