The Fine Print Issue Four, October 2014 | Page 4

This critique section has been brought into effect in a bid to make the articles more opinionated - a few articles every issue that serve as radars for the ever-changing scene on campus. These are aimed at bringing to light the necessities of students and may serve as eye openers. Six decades post-independence, come elections our beloved politicians still chalk out promises of installing toilets in every home. For a country aspiring for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, sanitation seems to have taken an unfortunate backseat. Such sorry state of affairs, though unpardonable, is understandable in backward rustic scenarios. How does one explain such occurrences in an elite institute that houses some of the best brains of the nation? Addiction to inertia and an unforgivable affinity to adjust to an ‘Indian’ way of life, apparently, are the culprits. Speaking up against what is wrong is perhaps not the right Indian thing to do, especially when it concerns something as trivial as lavatories. One should just adjust and look at bigger things in life. A wing of 16 people has three lavatories - fair enough in an Indian way of thinking. You wake up in the said wing in the morning, rush to the bog to calm your tumultuous bowels and are greeted by the sight of a lavatory flooded with the remains of somebody’s dinner processed through fifty feet of digestive tract. You curse the fellow for forgetting to ‘not flush’ after his morning crusade with his bowels. You check on the other two lavatories, find one occupied and remember the futility of even opening the door of the perennially flooded one. What do you do? You find another toilet in another wing and relieve yourself. You make a note of the faulty U-bend that disgustingly floods the toilet every time you flush and add it to the bunch of mental notes you made of the washbasin that clogs up every couple of days, the urinal that floods up when flushed, the permanently flooded-hence-dysfunctional bathroom and heavens know what not that ails your hostel facilities and do what most BITSians do with such notes NOTHIN