Cheers Dears
By Augusto Pinto
The P & S Problem
Dears,
The other day I was at Ashok's, the place located between the Post Office
and the Herald Office, which serves the best chicken masala this side of the
Mandovi, as the taxi drivers who frequent will tell you, sipping from a
glass of some so-so stuff, while across me sat a bearded professor sort of
chap named Viggy (pronounced vee-jee). Viggy likes to read Marx and question
everything and when he isn't ranting about communalism, he's whingeing about
the condition of the poor.
Being a teetotaller, and tea being a beverage that is not looked upon with
favour in Ashok's; and he being a vegetarian to boot, Viggy had nothing
better to do, but hold forth on his latest obsession.
"How could they do this?" he thundered waving a newspaper in my direction.
"Do what, Viggy? And who are you referring to, may I ask?", I drawled as I
dipped a piece of bread in the chicken gravy. He said, "The High Court." I
asked,"What have they done ?"
"They've banned the people from P-ing and S-ing!" , he replied, visibly
upset. "What's P and S, Viggy?" "Do I have to spell everything out man?
Number one and two!" said the exasperated man, continuing,"They say that if
you're caught P-ing or S-ing at any public place in Panjim you may get fined
fifty bucks."
"Seems like a a good idea to me. Why should anyone want to do their jobs out
in the open? Why don't they go to a W.C.?" I queried. He snarled at me,"Well
if there aren't any toilets, then where else are they to do it?"
"Then the answer is that the Government should build some more, I guess" I
said. Viggy retorted, " Do you think anyone's going to give up their land
for the government to build toilets upon them. Do you know where the price
of real estate has shot up to ?" I asked,"What about those Sulabh
affairs?", referring to the pay public toilets that the Government runs.
"How many of those are there? And in any case when people don't have money
to eat, when they don't have a place to sleep, do you think they'll have the
money to spend on pay toilets", he screeched at me. So I asked airily,"Then
why come to Panjim?" I meant this as a joke, but Viggy missed it completely.
He flung some of the deadliest slurs ever invented by the Commies at me
saying,"You've sold out to the Elite, you Running Dog of the Imperialists",
and he stormed out of Ashok's, much to my dismay. "There goes another
friend", I sighed to myself.
Later that night, sitting in the smallest room of my house, I was reading an
old issue of The New Yorker where I came across an article that got me
thinking. It seems that in Manhattan, U.S.A. a certain Professor Wanchoo Im
used Googlemaps, a tool available on the internet, to map out all the
public restrooms in the city. So anyone in an urgent need to P or S can just
use his internet enabled mobile phone to find the nearest loo to relieve
him/herself.
"Technology!", I exclaimed to myself excitedly, "Technology is the
solution - although not exactly the Manhattan model. Mobile!! -mobile is the
key word! First the public must all have mobile phones. The Govt. can
provide these free of cost to the poor. Then the Panjim Corporation must
acquire mobile toilets. Then everytime anyeone is feeling queasy s/he just
rings up a central control room who will despach a mobile loo to the spot.
This will bring relief all around. To the mobile phone companies of course;
also the ministers who will get kickbacks from the mobile phone companies
and service providers; so too the city fathers who will get kickbacks from
the manufacturers of the mobile loos; the poor who will be able to P and S;
and the sensibilities of the rich will be spared the ugly sight of people
P-ing and S-ing around the streets of Panjim, without giving up their land.
And maybe Viggy will start talking to me again.
Cheers (ENDS)
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The above article appeared in the April 16, 2008 edition of the Herald, Goa
