Ode to the Indian Half-Toilet

For at least a century there have been two basic types of toilet in India: the "squatter" and the "Western". The squatter, otherwise known as the "Indian Toilet" is not particularly comfortable for people brought up on western designs since they require a bit of balance and make it almost impossible to peruse the morning paper while you go about your business. The Western, on the other hand, is not particularly comfortable for someone used to squatting. I guess I'm not entirely sure why, but perhaps we are just creatures of habit and most comfortable doing out business the way we learned.

But having multiple types of toilet designs led to a lot of confusion in India. Often apartments have two bathrooms -- one with each type of toilet -- so that guests more comfortable with one over the other wouldn't be inconvenienced.

And then some brilliant bathroom engineer came up with a solution to the steady proliferation of water closets: why not create a device that was equal parts western and India. In other words why not create the world's most impractical toilet on the planet and set it loose on millions of people around Indian. They created the great Indian half-toilet, or "Oriya pan": a marvel in idiotic design. It resembles an art-deco Starship enterprise

In all my travels through this great continent I have never met a single person who prefers this design. It sits an uncomfortable twelve inches off the ground--too low to sit on, and way too high to squat on. And while negotiating the bowl shape -- because crap falls differently if you are squatting or sitting -- they found a happy medium that invariably has to be cleaned after every use.

Yet somehow despite the fact they no one actually wants to use the darn half-toilet they have bred steadily across the country. A full half of the apartments I have seen here in Chennai are equipped with the deal-breaking appliance and no land lord is willing to contemplate swapping them out for a more practical design.

Well here's to the Oriya Pan, the half-squat, half-sit contraption that is sure to make hundreds of millions of people groan with misery until one day a populist government finally bans the device and soars into a brief span of unrivaled popularity.