Toilet Remote !

I found this remote control device in the bathroom of a house I happened to visit. I had thought that I had been  ‘toilet trained’ when I was a child and I never imagined that I may again need TT in my life to perform one of the most basic functions of my body. As the remote control device shows, you can warm up the seat, use hot or cold water and clean yourself in a dozen different ways if you make proper use of this device. Because of my previous experiences with technology,  I am apprehensive about using it without training. Who knows ? By pressing one wrong button I may scald my butt !

Seeing this device, I was reminded of two other articles I have read about the subject. One was the childhood stories of Roald Dahl, where he describes about his boarding school days in England. I understand that the juniors were totally under the mercy of the house captain or the master, as they were known. This captain / master was a senior student whose wish was an order which invoked severe punishment if overlooked. Dahl has written about being sent to the toilet during winters to sit on the toilet seat for some time before the master intended using it, to keep the seat warm for the master. This gadget does that job now. It was probably a mercy that the juniors were not asked to scrub the captain after he was done, which task is also now performed by this gadget ! 

The second one was an article by one of the very popular Marathi writers Sri P L DeshapanDe.  Pu la DeshapanDe. Unfortunately I was unable to read the Marathi original and only read a Kannada translation. That was about four or five decades back.  PLD writes that he visited the new house of a friend. This friend, being a believer in the latest technology, had made use of all the latest gadgets he could find. He gave a tour of the house showing off all the gadgets in the house and when they reached the toilet, explained - ‘You don’t have to switch on the light. You open the door and the bulb lights up. You don’t have to open the tap. You touch this button and the bucket fills up. You don’t have to clean the pan. You touch this button and the pan cleans itself’ and so on and so forth.  After hearing all the explanations PLD responds  ‘all that is very well. But after I sit there, do I have to strain or the evacuation also happens at the touch of a button ?!