Civic Sense

One of the many things that had impressed me during my visit to the US was the facility of ‘restrooms’ or toilets. Any establishment, big or small has an attached toilet which is clean and well maintained. The urinals are usually self flushing and if not, people who use them invariably flush them after use. Those located in large offices or malls are actually ‘posh’. I found one such 'public restroom’ in the Renaissance Center building in Detroit downtown, which houses the head office of General Motors and since it was empty at the time, even took a picture of it. When I said that I took photographs of anything and everything I was not exaggerating.





Toilets in our country, when compared to what they were twenty or thirty years back, have improved a lot. Those who have used them in our bus stands and railway stations over the years know what I mean. While the administration or the managements seems to be putting efforts to better things, I feel, we, the users, are yet to develop the civic sense which would further improve the situation.

I was in the passport office at Panaji last week. I needed to use the urinal and was happy to find a toilet on the premises. I was happier to see that it had been washed, did not smell and that the taps had running water. I was about to come out of the toilet after use, when I remembered that I always used to flush them during my visit to the US. I felt ashamed that I forgot about it as soon as I landed in my country. Our ex president Sri Abdul Kalam, in one of his articles has highlighted this tendency of ours and has requested everyone to be as good a citizen in our country as we usually are while we are in a foreign country.

I went back and noticed that it was a manual flush pan and seemed to have a working apparatus and running water. My civic sense woke up. I thought of Mr. Kalam and decided that I would do whatever little I can, to improve things in my country and pressed the flush knob.

Water sprayed out of the knob splashing my face, clothes, ceiling and everything else except the pan.

I walked out of the toilet wiping my face and shaking out water droplets from my shirt, admonishing my civic sense to remain shut up in future.