You know how sometimes you send out a link thinking it may interest your fellows & you get an unexpected page-long response? That happened to me recently. I sent out a link to an article in the race/culture/activist journal ColorLines on lots & the apparent “shame & pride” associated with our community’s traditional bathroom practices.

Lotahs are ‘water containers used to clean yourself after using the toilet. They look like teapots without covers and are made of metal or plastic. With one hand, you pour the water and with the other, you wash yourself clean. They are commonplace throughout South Asia, and in many Muslim countries they are used for cleansing yourself before prayer. However, once South Asian and Muslim immigrants come to the United States, the pressure to assimilate forces many of us to make the transition from lotah to toilet paper. But there are some South Asians who refuse to cross over. Instead, they find themselves living double lives, using lotahs-in-disguise.’

The article details the trauma (& resultant art exhibit at, Fatal Love, in NYC) associated with using lotahs/-in-disguise in public restrooms or while living with roommates or partners of a different background, which seems to cut across lines to include ‘teachers, teenagers, high-powered lawyers, statisticians, artists,and first-generation and second-generation South Asians.

Listening to their stories, I was amazed by the depth of people’s shame and the lengths that they had gone to in order to hide their lotahs…Why did lotahs feel so dirty, when using water was more clean?…The dominant culture knows that if you can make people feel shame, you can make them do anything.’

I’m not quite sure I agree with this dramatic analysis but I sent out the link & the email exchange that it prompted surprised & amused me:

Baraka: This is an interesting article – I was never embarrassed about lotahs growing up. In fact I just thought anyone who didn’t use one was weird. And nasty! :)

Non-South Asian Recipient: Well, the concept of using water while cleansing yourself in the washroom in a Western context is not at all weird or awkward. In fact, it’s typically associated with luxury in the form of a bidet.

The difference between this approach and the South Asian approach is that nobody in a Western society wants to put their bare hand on, what may be, a messy bottom and rub it clean, thereby leaving one with the feeling that they just washed a toilet with a bare hand…not too appealing. “You mean that I have to put my fingers all over the source of my explosive diarrhea???”

However, with the concept of a Bidet, or perhaps even a “Muslim shower”, where one washes the bottom with a stream of fairly high-pressure water, and then wipes dry/clean using toilet paper, you eliminate the “poo-palm” or “crapnail” syndrome. It is also easily accomplished by using a preliminary wipe with TP, followed by a wipe of moistened TP (from the nearby sink, for example), finalized with a drying wipe of TP. “Wax-on, Wax-off!”

Using water is by far much cleaner than paper alone. It’s pointless to argue otherwise. But people in the West are accustomed to not having to handle their own bodily refuse without a layer of paper/rubber/biohazard-suit as an intermediary. What we need is cooperation, and innovation…a middle-path, so to speak…and perhaps a H2O-TP combo will make everyone happy. (Note that in an ideal situation, the bumwash H2O need not be potable–as is often the case in the West—and using lesser-grade water would greatly reduce the demands of water purification plants.)

As you can tell, I’ve spent too much time deliberating this topic.

Baraka: (gaping) I stand amazed at your intensive research on the subject.

Wiping, followed by water, & another wipe not only eliminates ‘poo-palm’ & ‘crapnail’ (as you so eloquently call them), but also dampbum.

Very important in this age of synthetic, non-breathable fabrics.