When I was last in India, around new years, I took a lot of photos of signs (Posts: 1, 2, 3) Of all the ones I saw, however, these two were my favorites. I spotted them at a Reliance truck stop / Dhaba on a toll road in Gujarat, late at night.
The first sign clearly indicates a ladies room, but in a very desi way. This is what I’d always hoped for from modern India; not a straight forward cloning of the west, but instead a bollystyle mashup, a “blend of eastern and western” tackyness. Yes, I know that not all Indian women wear saris, I’m Punjabi. But it’s still more apposite than a woman in a dress, and for Gujarat, it’s dead on many Gujarati women wear saris, albeit in the local style.
The second one I love because it takes the mickey out of the western name for the facilities, the “bathroom”. You know, if you’re doing #2 in a tub, I really don’t want to know about it. Toilets are for p*ssing and sh*tting in, bathrooms are for bathing in. And better still, this icon doesn’t show a western style shower (which many truck drivers may never have used) but instead an Indian style bath (or a very confused man using a lota wrongly 
). It’s a shame these signs aren’t available for import here …
Oh yes, in case you were curious, the men’s room was spotless (unlike this: 1, 2) My nostalgia for traditional dhabas only goes so far …
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p> Update: Binoy cleaned the images up! Here they are [jpg, eps]:
tu mera, tu mera, tu mera, tu mera tu mera comment number 1 !
Dude .. I have the best bathroom signs from India – I wish they were for sale. I have to dig up the pics when I get home.
Love the ladies’ room sign. That is some fine picto-design.
Sorry about that comment. I’ve just always wanted to say it and get it out of my system, though 🙂
Love those signs! When I was little, I couldn’t understand why some people the shit-piss room “bathroom” because bath was always taken in a separate room. Have you heard the one about the DCBA who wanted to stop at the restroom for the night while on the highway?
My nostalgia for traditional dhabas only goes so far Â…
Real traditional dhabas still have outdoor bathroom. You go to the farm/ bushes behind. I do not think they provide indoor bathrooms – the ones where you buy pakoras, bun omlettes, aloo-poori.
Some dhabas, like Cheetal near Meerut have quite clean bathrooms, in fact.
In general, you observations are correct about bathroooms
And to clarify, that set of photos of a horribly dirty toilet were not actually taken at a dhaba, they were taken elsewhere. I just wanted an example of a horribly dirty desi toilet 🙂
Now these are cool bathroom signs
Sign 1 Sign 2
I should have taken them off the wall.
i’ve always wondered, how many of you guys use lotas? most of my hindu friends use toilet paper, while most of my muslim friends use lota. Using water to clean yourself down there is actually the proper way to clean yourself in Islam, so i guess that has an affect. But why do so few Hindus do it in america. Also, I have found that a lot of my Christian Indian friends in america use Lota too. Survey time guys.
Wonderful!
I love the stencil-able simplicity of the ones on the post.
now this is what i call a bathroom…
The new bidet style toilet is all the rage in Japan and will likely soon take over the US.
OMG…you’ve rendered me dysfunctional for the rest of the day. HOLY COW this is amazing. I’m so freaking fascinated by toilets!! I’m dying over here!!
mr. ennis: um.. no, for guju women, the sari is worn differntly where the paloo comes in front.. like this.. 🙂
and there is even a video out for those out there…to figure out the almost 18 different ways to wear this most sexy piece of clothing…
To follow up on #11 – bidets seem to be everywhere in India – especially in the NCR. it’s a jet with a thin spout. i even knew a family who’d hooked it to a little ‘geyser’ – for those really cold winter mornings.
…and for Gujarat, itÂ’s dead on. Actually, in Gujarat, the pallu goes this way.
shodan.. i mentioned that in #13…
That’s so cool! Do you know if it’s any good?
I meant that Gujarati women are more likely to wear saris than women in some other parts of India, not that the sari style was accurately rendered 🙂
well… miss sonia… i actually do not know.. since i know how to wear the sari both the guju and non guju way as shown in the bathroom sign above… it looks fascinating..maybe you can get it on netflicks? 🙂
hehe.. mr. ennis..that might be true..as i’m taking momma falafel to a usc trojan football game this weekend and she is wearing…drumroll please…a red/gold sari… :).. = priceless…i might wear a red/gold salwar to be a momma falafel/chick pea bonding extravaganza…
anything is better than the german toilet.
Hahahah I’m suddenly 5! This discussion looks like it is about to go down the toilet.
Ennis, Funny you wrote about clean stenciled signage in India… On a related note,when I was last there I was mesmerized by this stack of Chavi Match Boxes – you know the desi kind (purplish box, yellow label with a red key). It looked like something Warhol would have loved to paint. I so badly wanted a Chavi T-Shirt.
And a google search turned up this. http://www.michaeltyler.co.uk/2005/12/chavi-matches.html. It is not just me 🙂
That stretch of tollway between Ahmedabad and Vadodara is sweet. Good God I remember going from Ahmedabad and Baroda on old highway national 8 (which is still in use, lots of Truckers use it since it is free). Took a solid 2-3 hours.
The 110km (aprox 60mile) can be covered in an hour from tollway’s end to end, right about the same time it would take here. I’ve stopped at those Reliance gas stations off the highway. I was impressed.
NO NO!!! I dont want to read this.
someone pull the plug… I dont want to read this any further…
too.. late…
yet. i feel curiously fulfilled. oy –
Funny, an article about septic tanks in
Sorry, here is the link
Kurma,
Thanks for the link to the sulabh museum. The website was very interesting, especially “The
Sonia #7 Are those from “Haveli” on GT road?
I must confess, like a PostSecret; I read Siddhartha’s german toilet article…twice.
Yes! I was wondering if anyone would recognize them. Unfortunately, we got there late and much of it was closed so I didn’t get to explore. Hence, the bathroom signs were the most interesting part of that stop =)
I think these icons are perfect fodder for the next set of Sepia Mutiny t-shirts.
ooh water-jets…those things are amazing…..
so after u are done exporting,u turn on a faucet and a nozzle sprays water in a stream which goes from the rear end(of the toilet bowl surface),parallel to the ground…….and since ones’s own rear-end is in the way there is shall i say a mildly pleasurable contact of the water stream with one’s (chronoligically)lesser dermatomes…..what needs to be removed gets removed by the physical force and what remains is a sense of incredible cleanliness and fulfillment………
ranks at par with the visit to the taj in terms of things-to-do-while-in-india.
Just thought these icons were too funny, so I had a bit of time and recreated these cleanly as a jpg or as a downloadable eps files for t-shirts,bumber stickers or anything else that might need some proper desi representation…
JPG http://www.thesoulwithin.com/downloads/indianbathicons.jpg
EPS http://www.thesoulwithin.com/downloads/indianbathicons.eps.zip
you will probably need something like adobe illustrator to open the eps…
oh and if the Indian copyright police come-a-knockin, you didn’t get it from me..
true.
i was planning a life-change. career vs entrepreneur (I eventually ended up somewhere in the middle) but i was seriously mulling over importing these jet-bidets and becoming the exclusive wholesaler in north america.
more than the clean feeling – i just feel it is MUCH MUCH greener option than TP. the business case however was lousy. there isnt enough money in canada nad moving to the US was out of the option. the “log kya kahengey” (what will people say) factor was not non-existent too. Uh.. I am a bidet salesman. Interestingly I shared this over drinks with a buddy and he proudly told me about his dad being the first his little part of africa to practice artificial cow insemination.
ah. the body function. it is so interesting, no?
chick-pea:
You meant “Nehaflix” ..right ?
Thanks Binoy! I’ve put the image in the post 🙂
Please! Someone make a t shirt!
Quizman, it was The Great Ganesha who posted it in #10.
in that case, here’s a another cute little factoid:
more here.
Dude I’ve been reading up on the Sulabsauchalya museum site half the day today!! In fact I’m so ridiculous everytime I think of that word Sulabsauchalya it makes me giggle! I now realize why they call it a throne!!
…brown.
oh mr. brown fob.. i am chuckling.. didn’t know a nehaflix existed…. wow… thanks for the info!
about the tshirts.. dunno if can beat this shirt sent to me by a hummus ‘most awesome’ lurker.. i still roll around in my bowl laughing… another one to add to the infamous tshirt that i love to pieces..
The Center for Unusual Museums in Munich has a Chamber Pot Museum, among other bizzarities.
in related toilet news…. a friend runs a company called ‘happily unmarried’ in delhi and goa, they sell hilarious little items, one of them being an ashtray in the shape of a sandaas.(they also have a pencil holder in the shape of the ever-present toilet mug) it’s a matter of national pride, i suppose, how india manages to manage its waste.
sandaas: http://www.happilyunmarried.com/productsdetail.asp?Page=2&ItemID=35 nri mug: http://www.happilyunmarried.com/productsdetail.asp?Page=2&ItemID=38
http://www.happilyunmarried.com
I was extremely tempted to go to the Toilet Museum this summer in Delhi; unfortunately, my mother quickly doused that urge with a swift “Chi!” and a look of nausea.
A note on my summer toilet experience:
I give mad propz to Rajasthan, who wins the award for Cleanest Public Toilets award over all the other states I visited (UP, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka). Many of the larger public toilets had options for squat or Western, and many also had handheld bidets. The toilets in the restaurants were spotless and even had handsoap available! We even made some v. sketchy road stops for pee-pee breaks, and even those places were a joy compared to past experiences in India.
UP definitely took last place; the excretory experience at all places there left me feeling dirty for days.
I love these signs!
Hey i loved those signs can you please send me link so i can upload all and show to my friends and spread some indianism 🙂
tiz but a pity you are looking for things desi …. far away from the land ….. looking for reasons to feel proud ……
and of what?
a bathroom sign?
who are you? what is your identity? smug that you can straddle two cultures, neither of which you belong to …….
whatever man
whatever
a bottle of red wine makes me write this?
what makes you write what you write
for what it’s worth, i am a desi too