Night Soil

The other day I was standing in Greater Kailash waiting for my transport. I had just bought a glass of the most sinful Masala Coke, when my eyes fell upon three girls buying smokes. I was standing close to them, so I didn’t really eavesdrop, but this is what I heard.

“I didn’t know what night soil was till I did my MPhil.” (She looked so young I thought.)

“You didn’t? I am surprised, which world are you living in? They call it night soil, but actually human crap that manual scavengers clean up even in these times.”

That aside. This little conversation took me back to a story I heard ever so often in my childhood. It is from Ajmer, where my maternal grandparents lived. Nana sb and Nani sb.

Nana sb had been elected the Chairman of the Municipal Corporation of Ajmer. He had been a Congressman and had hosted Pandit Nehru at a time too. We all looked at his photographs with a degree of awe. They were framed all over the drawing room. Nana sb was also a social man - he was one of the rare few who was a member of both the Lions Club and the Rotary. He was also a Mason. There were Masonic Lodges named after him in Nepal and in Udaipur. In fact when he passed away he was a Grand Master or some rank which is the highest among the highest in the Freemasons. He was a proud, righteous man.

During his tenure as Chairman, the manual scavengers of Ajmer went on strike. They refused to visit the back lanes of the homes and open the trap doors to collect the piles of human faeces, to lug it to the place where they dumped it and then later ground it all with their feet turning it into whatever…

Nana sb was on their side. He knew their conditions were inhuman. He was trying to build a facility which would take away a lot of the unthinkable torture they went through every day. Unfortunately, the people who cleaned the toilets were distrusting and would not believe in any promise. Promises made to them had been broken too many times.

Days passed and the city became a hellhole. The little trap doors in the back lanes of homes were overflowing onto the streets. The risk of disease was growing every minute. What to speak of the stench.

Nana sb knew something had to be done. He set up a camp office in the outhouse of his home and formed a team consisting of his three strapping sons and their friends. Some of his younger friends came too. He had many - in fact he had friends who were half his age.

Nani sb organised mountains of carbolic soap, extra buckets of water and towels. And the men got to work.

For days they would all step out in force after night fall and clean out those over flowing trapdoors. The men and the boys would work till past midnight and come back and scour themselves clean of the physical signs of the work they had undertaken and also try and scour their spirits. One of my uncles confessed that the stench seemed to have seeped into their very skins. After all they were wading in ankle deep faeces and sometimes their legs sank into the muck, right up to their calves.

No one was allowed to wince, cover their nose or gag. Nana sb insisted that the work be done the same way as those men and women did it- day in and day out for centuries.

The logjam was resolved and the cleaners finally got a huge facility on the outskirts of the city.

Men like my maternal grandfather don’t exist no more. They threw away the mould.

I can't even imagine the kind of influence he must have wielded - that all those young men fell in line with him. Amazing. What sort of motivation it must have been.

These were all men who lived in comfortable homes, were educated and earned well. Yet, they were able to do this. I am proud to have known them all.

I doubt I could do something so selfless.

I have though stepped into overflowing sewers and cleaned them, not once but several times. Face poker straight and no fuss. What had to be done, had to be done. Plus the children had to shown that anything could be done if the need arose. I wonder if they remember?

Not missing that sort of action though. #StoriesFromThePast #nightsoil #humanscavengers

Like

Comment

Share