In an earlier thread, reader Sadaiyappan reminds us of the reverence with which many cultures in India regard paper and books:
Ok, I’m a tamil. Tamils were raised to respect paper because you get education through paper and all legal documents are of paper, if my foot accidentally touches a paper, I must touch the paper with my hands and then touch my eyes much like I am praying / being blessed. So we are not supposed to use paper to wipe our ass because it is disrespectfull to the paper… [Link]
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Sheep poo paper, complete with flecks! |
The Elephant Poo Poo Paper company makes stationery and related goods out of dried, odorless elephant shit:We can make about 25 large sheets of paper from a single piece (or turd) of elephant poo poo!!! That translates into about 10 standard sized journals including the front and back covers! Neat, huh!?!?!?… [Link]
There is also paper made from Moose Droppings (site in Swedish), Sheep Droppings, and even Panda droppings. Yeah, I can’t see this going over in India at all …
It’s all mental association.
If I took a bar of gold and melted it into a cup, you’d drink out of it. If I took a bar of gold and melted it into a bedpan, you wouldn’t.
Same gold. Different mental association.
They should make it with cow dung. First, cow dung is in abundant supply. Second, People in the villages already coat their walls with it. I don’t think they will have a problem with using paper made from cow dung
hmm…
While I can relate in part to Sadaiyappan’s comment, for me it isn’t the paper as much as what’s on it. One would never step on a book or newspaper; I was told it was because these contained knowledge, and one didn’t disrespect knowledge. So it was more about what was actually on the paper, not the paper itself. So while they’re inseparable, I don’t see the connection between stepping on a book, newspaper, or paper with writing on it and a piece of toilet paper destined for one’s butt.
I personally prefer a lota just because it gets me cleaner (sorry, TMI?).
Anyway, I think that would have made for an interesting variant on the Sepoy Rebellion: Brahmin scribes in Tamil Nadu in the late 19th century discover that the paper the British have given them to write on is really made from elephant shit…
Ennis, why Thirunelveli?
About not touching paper with your feet, Mallus do that too. But it is primarily with respect to books because of the whole Education -> Knowledge -> Saraswati correlation. As kids I remember this one particular day where we had to place our books for a puja and we were not supposed to study or read anything till the books were taken back after the puja.
I still have to habit of touching the book and then my chest and forehead if I have accidentally stepped on it or something. A few firangs who have noticed this habit find it funny and ask me if I am a catholic cuz its quite similar to crossing myself.
I was looking for a city in TN, and the title was euphonious that way.
This was my impression too. (As a side note, it was deeply entrenched into me as a kid to NEVER leave books and papers lying around on the floor and especially to never lay a foot on them. It drove me nuts in school to see kids casually resting their feet on books on the floor. Even now it’s the visual equivalent of fingernails across a chalkboard.)
Will some hindhus will take offense to religous texts being made from this paper ?
Tamils practice this Puja also..
Ok, phew. I thought you might to tell me that the halwa is made from elephant dung…
Accidentally stepping on a book is not as bad as not reading it at all, thats reverence in principle I was taught.
Crap. Is anyone familiar with mass apology techniques for a bookshelf?
Yes to Rupa (#6): I remember being HORRIFIED, when, as a child, I saw an American movie in which a kid made a big stack of books and climbed up on it, IN HIS SHOES, to reach a cookie jar or something. I’m an atheist and I’ve lived in the West — in the U.S. and now Europe — for going on 15 years but I still have a visceral negative reaction to people stepping on books, sitting on books, or (unrelated to this topic, I realise) touching the soles of their shoes, as some Americans are wont to do absently, the way I might play with my hair or drum my fingers on a table top. In graduate school, some students would casually put their feet up on the seminar table, among the books and papers, with the soles of their shoes facing other students or the professor, and yeah. Nails on a chalkboard. My horror has nothing to do with any vestigial reverence for Saraswathi, whom I see as simply a nice, neat symbol for the value of knowledge. But these values die hard.
That said, though, I agree with Pagla (#2) that Indians don’t traditionally consider cow waste unclean. Not only is cow dung still used as a building material in India, it was (maybe still is?) regularly used as cooking fuel. And the antiseptic properties of cow urine are legendary — during WWII, my grandfather used it to treat people with scabies, which, apparently, it cures almost instantaneously.
If they made bog-rolls out of animal poo, I wouldn’t use them.
I was
But I never made this association
not a toguh question
i would still do the same old.
Catholics here cross themselves if they “disrespect” food in any way. So, they don’t give me puzzled looks (like folks do up north) when I touch my eyes after having stepped on a book or piece of paper.
Yeah, it’s Saraswati Puja, during Vijayadasami/Dussehra.
As for poo paper, I’m with Pagla(#2) above, gobar gas comes from dung and so does building material. I wonder what it smells like when burned.
@vivek
You could pull it down and stomp on them, and by principle lessen the offense
I’ve had a similar upbringing (though I’m a Bengali ABD) regarding the printed matter = God thing. Touching print media, as with another person, with one’s feet has become absolutely ingrained in me as one of the most reflexive taboos I can think of, requiring the same sort of pseudo-Catholic crossing oneself motion.
This has been misinterpreted in recent years as a sign of religiosity, particularly when I go to India. The thing is, despite my personal religious agnosticism, I’m so thoroughly culturally Hindu that NOT touching my head and heart would be like some physically unpleasant, irrationally distressing thing that has little to do with any logic or actual religiosity. It’s become the equivalent of some OCD tic or not stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk from childhood. To do so without the requisite ritual act of contrition is actually physically uncomfortable.
It’s intellectually infuriating to me as I a) don’t consider myself superstitious, and b) realize the absurdity of the action of touching a hand to one’s head and then to one’s chest as somehow having any affect whatsoever on one’s karmic outcome. Nevertheless, I cannot help but do it. So in order to “pass” I usually find myself casually feigning an unconnected set of movements — e.g. running my fingers through my hair and scratching my chest, or sort of flicking my forehead and grazing my heart on the downswing as my hand drops. It really is quite ridiculous.
In TN, I know a lot of local stores manufacture their own notebooks from cow dung. The paper looks very yellow. I am not saying the color of the paper is because it is made of dung. But probably because they are not using high tech manufacturing techniques. It is perfectly ok and a lot of people use it. It is cheaper than other notebooks.
Yeah, thats what you use to “workout maths” in “rough”. BTW, old newspapers are traditionally used to clean/package mess and collected in piles to barter for kitchen ware and/or money – that might explain the reverence too.
16 JuneBugg
Ahh the travesty of an otherwise prudish crowd that crosses fingers over cheeks and goes “smooch” “smooch” (As they throw a flying kiss) as the public transport bus pulls up near the million temples in Madras, wouldn’t shake a religious (wo)man’s hands 🙂
I think all this reverence is only at face value or to be cool(in some cases). I read somewhere that India is the third or fourth largest producer of leather, made from cow skins. I am pretty sure we are not waiting for the cow to die to make leather.
I’m waiting for them to make toilet-paper from human poo. The recycling freaks would be so thrilled they’d die of pleasure.
how would traditional desis deal with paper made from animal dung?
There are riches to be made by creatively marketing this solution. Guilt-Free wiping ! It’s Dung paper !
Looking forward to that episode of South Park!
Has the spirit and ghost of Rabelais inhabited the Dakota bunker? Two posts on excrement in the space of three days! Holy Shit!
Snapper, they’re not independent. This one flows easily out of the last one, it’s inspired by a comment in the lota thread. And if you look at the bottom of the lota post, you’ll see that I’ve written on this topic before. Given Gandhi’s obsession with this issue, I think I’m in good company though …
Ennis, stop being anti-Semitic.
wouldn’t it just be easier to set up a boutiques across europe and the US. price the paper at 10000% above cost and make some sham story of how this paper was used by maharajahs for centuries? I think a lot of rich white people would start buying it, you know the ones who think asian culture is a fad…ya those ones for sure, they eat this crap up
It’s sacred, even, like everything from a cow (except leather).
Elephant dung might not be sacred, but I’m pretty sure it would be okay.
Well I think traditional desis don’t use TP and use a lota instead, so it wouldn’t really matter to them.
Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem using the paper for TP or to write on.
Everytime I see something like this on TV or in a movie I cringe. I was taught as well that you should always respect books and newspapers as they are a source of knowledge. If you accidentally touch them with your feet then you should touch the book/paper to your forehead for absolution/forgiveness.
This is off topic, but if we ever spilled milk in our house my mom would always use her right middle finger and put a drop of spilled milk on her forehead. Growing up we were taught to never waste milk because it comes from cows but more importantly not everyone can afford to have it so we should never waste what others are wanting for. In America milk is really cheap, but in the village that my mom grew up in, not everyone could afford to buy milk and she brought that mentality with her to America. When my college roomates would have a bowl of cereal and leave the bowl half full of milk in the sink when they were done with the cereal, it would make me cringe to see the waste.
My grandparents drilled into us kids the same reverence for paper and books. To this day I can’t step on a piece of paper without making a respectful gesture to my forehead, and my parents do the Saraswati puja for books in the new year. Books/ paper are ofcouse transmiters of knowledge, vidhya in sanskrit, and are rightly honored.
To apply this belief to other products is ridiculous and almost mocks the concept.
Same, but it’s out of obsessive compulsive habit now, more than anything else. I think cow dung paper is a great idea.
And then there’s sometimes the debating process, you know…you step on say a copy of say the NY Post (Steve Dunleavy, Cindy Adams, Andrea Peyser transmit alot of things, just never knowledge)..do you make the gesture? The rigors of modern life…
Sam (#17):
Tell me more!
It’s amazing how many of us, ABDs as well as people raised in India alike, have this in common… not wanting to touch books or other respected items/people with our feet. There must be so many other cultural traits like that that many of us share which no one’s commented on yet. Fascinating, and kind of touching. As another example of an Indian cultural trait that I suspectsome of us probably share, is the concept of ‘jhoota’. To this day I hate to sip out of someone’s glass or eat with their spoon or have them take a swig from my coke can…or ‘try’ their food sitting in their plate at a restaurant…because it’s ‘jhoota’.
The small stores usually get the old newspapers/papers from their customers, mix it with cow dung and prepare papers/notebooks out of it. This is definitely not anything new. Everyone knew about the low quality notebooks. Villages have been known to use cow dung pretty much for everything from mixing it with mud to build huts, as a fuel for burning, and for papers. The quality of the paper is questionable mainly because high tech process is not applied and also it is was part of small scale production, and that was the reason like anand pointed out in #18, we use it for “rough work”. We have two notebooks, one for “rough work”, one for “writing it neat”. You use the low quality paper for trying out stuff or in my case to doodle.
desishiksa # 28
When I used to visit Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu when I was younger, I used to see temple elephants do the rounds through the neighborhood streets getting food and money (mostly coins) in return for a blessing with it’s trunk. In doing their rounds they would drop a load of dung every now and then and I would notice a whole bunch of kids and some older jump into the dung and stomp on it in bare feet, since the dung was considered to have medicinal properties! The dung would be cleared within 10 to 20 minutes by someone with a basket that usually collected cow dung to make raati (cow dung chips) for kindling the fire in the kitchen. Those days firewood was still very common in many kitchens in the city.
Actually, in Indian offices, it is customary for people in one team to share food and eat from each other’s plates, as long as you don’t make it ‘jhoota’ by sharing spoons or other utensils. Picking a little bit of food from someone’s plate is not considered making it ‘jhoota’. “Double dipping” is also not considered making it ‘jhoota”.
I’m an atheist , and the custom of respecting books has remained with me. I teach a lot of kids who will hurl their book-packs on the floor, step on books, kick them across the room ,etc. I finally sat each group down one week and spent about half an hour explaining how/why it upset me. Amazingly, those kids make a conscious effort at least in my classes to do right by their books. Score one point for cultural diversity.
Paging brown seinfeld…
Funny — just this morning on public radio’s Marketplace Morning Report, they closed with a short segment about the Chinese making paper from panda dung! Apparently it is quite the premium product!
Double dipping so totally is jhoota. After you leave, people take things into their own hands. I remember my mother scoffing at a South African Desi friend she met while studying at the Inns of Court who took a bath and changed her clothes every time she went to the loo, which is obviously how things were done when her peeps left Gujarat, and strictly speaking, much cleaner. Anyway, my kids and even the Ex (who is Swedish, but learned Desi habits from me quite young) have got the part about jhoota straight, and they all fast on occasion, but I’m thinking I never taught my kids to do pranam to books they’ve touched with their feet– although they don’t touch books with their feet.
When Rudi Giuliani’s President, they can have elephant dung loo paper in the White House.
So, you have never had a plate of rice with 5 people eating from the plate using their own spoon?? I did that everyday in Bombay. That is so double dipping, and so not jhoota. It is jhoota only when something that has touched your mouth directly touches someone else’s mouth. The deliciousness of the food automatically negates any jhootaness that might be transferred from the spoon.
So is kissing jhoota? Or does the second clause trump the first again?
LMAO Ennis! Touche!
I think too many people obsess over jhoota or entu(sp?) as we gujus call it. How is cleaning your arse with your hand and water less dirty than having a friend/family member take a sip of your drink or a taste of your food?
LMAO!! Kissing is fun because it’s jhoota
You use your left hand for washing and your right hand for eating. As a joke, my Mama would give directions using the terms “dhone-wala haath” and “khanne-wala haath”
True. My cousin’s that are lefties were forced to eat with their right hands, especially when in public.
Interestingly in Gujurati the root for the word right and eat is the same: jhum. Jhumini-baju = Right side Jhumile = Eat!
I am so thankful for this board because nice to know that I am not the only one who goes crazy when I see anyone standing on or kicking books 🙂
Also : as regards ‘jhootha’, the concept varies widely from the South to the North of India. As a TamBram married to a Punju, I had to ‘adjust’ my whole concept ‘jhootha’ after marriage . Southies have no concept of ‘dry jhootha’ : in other words, growing up , even if I had only touched a “roti” with my right hand and did not touch anything else , my hand was jhootha and I could not use the same hand to serve myself anything else -with a spoon or without. After moving up North, I found that in my in-laws’ homes it was ok to touch anything else after touching the ‘roti’ as that was “dry jhootha’.However, if I ate a piece of roti dipped in curry with my right hand, that was ‘wet jhootha'(as I had put it in my mouth) and now politeness demanded that I not use the right hand to touch anything else on the dinner table.
Hey : I didn’t say it makes sense – just reporting on my experience!
Runa, you are confusing the regimen of “pathu” obsessively followed by Iyers (not all TamBrams) which basically forbids handling starchy foods (Rice/Roti) and other kinds (picke, curry) together, probably because starches rot faster and mixing with other food stuffs may affect their longevity. Note, there is no “Jhootha” (which is essentially salivary contact).
Your punjabi in-laws probably follow the ubiquitous Indian Jhoota of salivary exception, the dry Jhootha I know applies to say large piece of corn chip (or murukku) that you bite piece-meal, and your hand has to be washed back to sanctity (even if you did not drool over it).
Nope! First of all did’nt grow up in an Iyer household.Therefore – no prizes for guessing which level of TamBram egotism ( I,Iyer,Iyengar!) I belonged to.
It had nothing to do with Roti and starch- EVERYTHING was jhootha in my grandmom’s place – once you touched foodstuff with your right hand you could not touch any other food with your right hand coz it was jhootha
Could be that grandma was exceptionally “acharam” …..
I just realised we’ve been saying ‘jhoota’ when the word is actually ‘jootha’.