private or public?

One thing I have noticed when driving by slums is how the bathroom situation is worked out. At night the lanes closest to the sidewalks are populated by people sleeping. So essentially a two lane becomes a one lane. Sometimes I see people get up in the night (often I go home around midnight or 1am) and cross the street and then go back to sleep. I am not sure why, but not until recently did I comprehend that the other side of the road was the “bathroom”. This afternoon I was in an auto rickshaw headed to the phone company. Near the phone company is a huge makeshift settlement where all the rickshaw-wallahs live with their families. As my auto slowed near the phone company I heard a loud, persistent, human noise. So I turned my head to see a less-than-ten-years-old kid taking a dump trying to get rid of the last bit of it. What I noticed was that there wasn’t a mug of water near him to wash himself after he was done nor was there an old newspaper or a leaf. I wondered if he would finish his job and just yank his pants up and go about his day.

The same day, much later I was talking to a friend and he told me that he noticed how open American sitcoms are about discussing the foibles of a couple’s sex life- the role play, the image problems, the boredom, the attitudes of each partner. Odd, I guess, in a place where people moving in for a kiss cuts to the same woman holding a “newborn” in the next scene.