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You've Gotta Hand it to Alternative Hygiene

by Zachariah Ezekiel

As I reflect upon my three months in India, I daresay I've done well at adapting to its customs and culture. I can haggle aggressively and effectively with a cab driver. I can eat rice and dhal (a sort of thin lentil stew) with my fingers. I am comfortable enough with the culture to know which conventions can be safely broken and which cannot; you can wear short pants if you don't mind being giggled at, for example, but never, ever shake hands with a woman.

But it is only in these last few weeks that I have achieved the true pinnacle of cultural assimilation. It is only now that I have given up toilet paper.

Recoil from the topic if you will, but know that your bathroom habits take on an added seriousness when you go abroad. Each time you visit an Indian john a battered water pitcher rests under a tap, or floats in a bucket, a grim reminder of the consequences of being caught sans-tp. Again and again you will gaze at this silently mocking sentinel of alternative anal hygiene, all the while praying that the handful of cheap, Chinese toilet paper you absentmindedly stuffed into your trousers that morning was not excessively depleted when you blew your nose that afternoon. Endlessly you will endure the derisive grins of the roadside toilet paper hawkers as they regard the sissy sahib, too prissy and unclean to touch his own rear-end. I kid you not, gentle reader, the tourist who clings to bum-wad clings to chains!

No doubt there are those among you who would be more than willing to submit to toilet tissue slavery, but know this: sanitary tissue is a fickle and unreliable master. Unless you take an obsessive interest in your own posterior cleanliness, you will eventually find yourself abandoned at a critical moment.

Generally this moment of abandonment is followed by a frantic search of one's person to determine whether any acceptable tissue substitute is available. Usually this brisk pat-down leads to one's money belt and to certain soul-searching questions such as, "Do I really need page 24 of my passport?"

(If I may be permitted a brief aside, I have noticed that low denomination currency notes often serve as a refuge of last resort. Interestingly, the list of non-toilet-tissue countries includes a disproportionately high number of states with badly devalued currencies. Whether or not this correlation is significant is a question for further study.)

But, alas, sometimes even the best-stocked money belt is without small bills or extra passport pages. Thus enters another initiate into the world of Indian loo-craft. And yet, one desperate encounter with a pitcher of water does not necessarily prompt acceptance of this practice, much less conversion. In fact, this first encounter often acts conversely, reinforcing a negative attitude towards what will henceforth be called the hand/water method. Acceptance and conversion can only take place after a period of logical assessment and evaluation.

In my particular case, I chose various criteria by which to judge both the toilet tissue and hand/water methods. The first and most obvious consideration is the level of cleanliness which can be attained using either method. Second, one must assess the physical and psychological comfort of using each technique. Finally, the environmental and economic implications of each habit should be weighed.

If one assesses cleanliness purely in terms of the object being cleaned, the hand/water method is a clear winner. After all, it is ridiculous to argue that swabbing with tissue, however vigorously, could ever equal a thorough cleansing using water and digits. But there is, of course, more to it than that. Intuitively we feel it irrational for so remote a region as the rectum to profit hygienically at the expense of so fundamental an organ as the hand. However, this argument ignores the variable of soap availability. After factoring in an enthusiastic post-fecal hand scrubbing then, all other things being equal, the hand/water method again emerges victorious.

The issue of comfort, even leaving the subjective nature of comfort aside, is less clear cut. There are obvious psychological obstacles that must be overcome before the hand/water method may be adopted as anything other than an emergency measure. From the purely physical point of view, the rather shocking sensation of ice-cold water up your backside takes some getting used to. Also, and this is perhaps the most damaging side effect from a comfort point of view, the hand/water method does leave the user with an exceedingly wet behind.

Notwithstanding this, there are comfort advantages as well. The high spice and bacteria inherent to Indian cuisine has been known to cause stomach upsets ranging in degree from mildly annoying to horrifically spectacular. In the case of the latter, the hand/water method can prevent the painful chaffing associated with excessive toilet paper use. Moreover, in the case of spice-induced eruptions, the cooling property of the water becomes an asset rather than a liability. One can also argue that the abandonment of toilet paper increases the psychological comfort level of the tourist since he or she is liberated from the fear of being caught... ahem... empty handed.

The economic advantages of rejecting toilet paper are admittedly open to debate. It is true that, since toilet paper is a high-priced specialty item in India, adopting the hand/water method will save the tourist money. But when you look at the big picture things are not so simple. Imagine the traumatic economic implications of mass conversion; one need only complete a simple calculation - say 100 million North American households going through two rolls a week - to see that bums are big business. On the other hand (no pun intended), are the economic spin-offs not offset by the environmental devastation wrought by our reliance on wiping?
Sadly, a chasm exists between paper-users and palmists. I believe that this rift, far from being irreconcilable, is simple the result of ignorance on the part of wipers as to the logic inherent in washing. Perhaps, in some small way, my example will help bridge this gap of misunderstanding. Hear me, wipers; hear the words of a friend who has crossed over to the other side. I reach out to you... with my right hand, of course.

Zachariah Ezekiel is a Canadian currently working, travelling and writing (et cetera) throughout Asia. This is his first article for Get Lost Magazine, and will be a difficult act to follow.