Colin has gone native here in India.

Journal by Colin McAuliffe

Well folks, I’m not really one for museums. Most works of art in art museums don’t hold my attention as long as other peoples’, not that I don’t find them interesting. I read really fast, so at the displays in history museums, I breeze though entirely too fast. When I travel, I very rarely visit museums, unless they’re extremely special, and here in Delhi I found one of those museums: The Museum of Toilets.

Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but in one of the most unsanitary metropolises on this planet there is a museum dedicated strictly to the porcelain throne. It cracked me up. I mean, I think only 30 percent of Indian families even have toilets.

The museum was started by a man who has made it his life’s task to bring sanitation to the Indian Nation (giggle). He has built toilets all over the country, including the worlds’ largest toilet compound, somewhere in southwest India. One of his main goals is the abolishment of what is known in India as “manual scavenging.” Manual scavenging is practice that pretty much all of us westerners would find disgusting. You see, in India, a lot of people have what are known as dry latrines, which are basically just a bucket that you poop in. Anyway, these scavengers, who are members of the absolute lowest caste of untouchables, come along, pick up your ablutions every night, and then dump it out in a field somewhere. It’s an entirely unhealthy and unsanitary practice, not only for the scavengers themselves, but for all people, because the feces ends up in people’s water systems. You can see why they are trying to abolish the practice, and untouchability in general.

The museum itself contains donations of various toilets and bathroom objects from more than twenty countries. They had some extremely interesting stuff there. For instance, they had a replica of a French king’s throne that actually was a toilet, complete with ashtray and cup holder. One of the more amazing items in their collection was an American-invented toilet that, rather than using water, electrically zapped your excrement into ash. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let me use it. I was also a little disappointed when I used their bathroom and it was just a normal toilet. You’d expect more at a museum dedicated to the thing. They had some great handouts, and of course, a guest book. I was shocked when I read through it that nobody had made any jokes or puns at all. Most of the comments, and there were a lot, were extremely lame. Things like “Very interesting” or “Wow, I never knew there was a museum dedicated to toilets.” So, Adam and I took it upon ourselves to spice that book up. So I wrote something along the lines of “Great museum, by far the crappiest place I have ever been in my life.” I forget what Adam wrote, but I’m sure it was funny too.

Anyway, there isn’t much to do in Delhi itself outside of shopping, so if you are there, you absolutely must visit the museum of toilets.

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