Return of the Piggy Toilet

You thought that the piggy toilet was a Goan invention. Right? That we in Goa could lay claim to inventing this environmentally friendly, dry privy, at a time when everywhere else in India, poor scavengers cleaned and carried this offence on their heads to places where they had to be dumped? Well. I thought so too, till I read recently that they found small replicas of the privy-pigsty in the tombs of Chinese royalty around 200 B.C. 

The pigsty latrine, sad to say, is not one of our inventions.

Most of us, however remember that revolting feeling at our sunrise ablutions just a few decades ago; fighting it off and giving ourselves up to thoughts of higher things by whistling away those sounds of grateful grunt. 

It is about this time, say a little before and after Goa’s liberation that a happy piglet family, whom we may call Leitao could be seen glorying in the abounding slush allowed them around the acreage of the reputed Patrao S’s property; partaking every morning of the offering laid out for them in the family privy. There were other piglet families, of course who partook of banquets from other well-to-do and influential Patrao families, all of them content in the belief that their Patrao was the best, providing them with sustenance and more. The piglets even spoke of a long line of ancestors who were reincarnated into that higher level of being called sometimes Vindaloo and sometimes Sorpotel that graced the Patrao’s table. 

In time these clever little porcine brains got cleverer and as they looked up at their dandy Patraos leave every morning in their fancy cars to their halls of assembly or wherever it was they went, they began to wonder why they had to be content with their slushy existence. They had heard a Patrao daughter read aloud the story by Anatole France in which a group of Penguins were baptized and were transformed into human beings. Why not us? They thought. If Penguins can do it, why can't we? And so the Leitaos, followed by the other piglet families went to the nearby river and washed themselves in a porcine ritual of self-baptism. 

It was not long before they were seen in the same halls of the Patraos, dressed in suits, wearing patent leather shoes and Rayban glasses. 

Disgusted with the sudden stink, manifested now in the language, diverse forms of gluttony and what they saw as shameless venality that now filled the hall, the Patraos slowly left the scene; over the years giving up their high offices to the well-shod, well-stuffed snouts.

What, you would ask did these well-shod piglets do for their sustenance in these halls, their new pigsty; how did they get their nourishment? Oh there were plenty of droppings from privies of various kinds: from contraband from across the seas, the booming real estate hurrahs, the rich take from under the table and oh so many sources. After all there is but a thin, translucent film between the fecal and the fiscal, isn’t there?

They lost no time in throwing parties, rollicking get-togethers of like-minded and not-so-like-minded snouts. They had a grunting good time moving from one party to another. Party hopping proved to be a perfect porcine pastime. Much, of course depended on the size of the fecal/fiscal offering. 

This indeed is an invention: the new elevated piggy toilet.

Rubbing its eyes in disbelief and impotence, the citizenry, with its modern flush toilets and septic tanks today wonders how this neo-piggy toilet came to pass, the stink now wafting into their homes; a lot of them confused and angry but not wanting to think the painful thought that it had to do with that little black spot on their finger.