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Toilets and other pertinent musings

In my humble opinion the world's largest formally built toilet facility has to be the railway tracks laid by the Indian Railways.  With I believe 70,000 miles of total track length criss crossing the sub-continent there is vast square footage available to its destitute masses for the morning, noon and night time urge to discharge effluent material.

Given it is on active track one cannot escape the vista if traveling by train. Incredible India indeed.

How about watching people taking a dump with your morning coffee as you look out the window, bleary eyed from your AC coach.  Sometimes the train will even slow down to let you take it all in.  Of course when the first class passangers take their dump the train toilet promptly releases the content on the same tracks.  Gives loose motions a whole new meaning.

India's biggest crime against humanity has to be illiteracy or not being able to educate its masses.  The poorest are illiterate and vice versa.  In most cases anyway.   Illiteracy leads to poor decision making as in when to start and stop procreation.  Or never to do so if conditions don't warrant.  But such logic is for the educated few.  Absence of it leads to population explosion like that faced by India.  And railway becomes your toilet.

Another curious observation with respect to railway in India is idea of 'before time' and late -  India's fastest trains run on a pathetic average speed of 60 miles an hour. So arrival times at major stations on a route are fabricated to ensure train arrived before schedule.

People are clueless about why it took x hours to do y miles.  As long as you get somewhere on time or before.   It matters to them because usually someone is there to receive them and tardy train leads to frustrated receivers or hosts as the case may be.

In case the readership is wondering how I could come up with such profound thinking first thing in the morning- I am no longer sweating- in fact I am in the AC compartment of a make believe super fast express (talk about redundant marketing) heading to see the erstwhile French colony in India called Pondicherey.




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