The Way of the Bucket

This is my bucket.
There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
My bucket is my best friend. It is my life.
Without me, my bucket is nothing.
Without my bucket, I am nothing.

In all seriousness, one thing that always interests people about foreign lands is plumbing. Eating and excreting are the fundamental activities of life, and thus it's no surprise that everyone does them a little differently. (The popularity of ethnic restaurants makes me wonder if there'd be any value in opening up a "Toilets of the World" complex where you could experience bathing and toileting in a bathroom from another country. I bet the kids would like it.) Today, we will discuss the Indian bathroom, and its most important feature, the bucket.

All bathrooms come with at least one bucket. You use it more or less depending on your level of wealth, but even in rich peoples' apartments in Mumbai, it's there. If you don't have running water, you use it to get the water to bathe. If you have running water but no shower, you fill it to get the temperature right. If you have a shower, you still need it to rinse the floor afterwards. Your clothes are washed in a bucket, even if it's by servants and not your own hands. (The packet of Tide I bought in Hyderabad actually includes directions on the back for bucket washing, but NOT machine washing.) After using the toilet, your bucket might be your only source of water for cleaning your nether regions. If you're really hard up, the bucket might BE the toilet. Ultimately, every Indian, rich or poor, probably begins and ends his/her day in salutation to a bucket.

A few things in the preceding paragraph might have surprised you, so let's discuss the rest of the bathroom. First, the toilet. They do come in the "squatting" version, but there are also plenty of "European style"; most of them look like the ones you know from home, with a slightly different flush mechanism. What'll get you is when you finish and realize there's no toilet paper. In the bad old days, you'd dip a cup (or your hand) into your trusty bucket, fill it with water, and use your left hand to assist you with some washing. (Hence why the left hand is not polite to touch/pass food with.) Nowadays, most people have a little hand-held showerhead that effectively acts as a mini-bidet. I had one in Hyderabad. I don't have one here. It's taken some getting used to, especially because there is often not soap by the sink. Hand sanitizer has been my friend.

Next, your water supply. Running water is pretty common these days (don't try to drink it). The central hot water heater, on the other hand, is almost unheard of. Hot water comes from a little just-in-time gizmo called a "geyser". Flip the switch, wait five minutes, and your hot tap is suddenly working. Try to remember to flip it back off when you're done.

Then, the shower. The shower itself is pretty much the same, albeit minus the various modes and gizmos we have. If you're lucky, the hot water line from the geyser connects to the showerhead as well as to the hot water tap. If not... well, say hello to Mr. Bucket again, as I do each morning. What we haven't mentioned is where all that water goes. There usually is neither tub nor shower stall. The entire floor is slightly tilted, and water from showering or clothes-washing simply runs downhill to a drain in the floor. Said drain is usually near the toilet, and is inevitably unable to completely dry the floor. Thus, answering nature's call almost always means wet feet, one of many reasons why most Indians go barefoot in their own homes. Given the almost-ubiquitous fine dust, it also means that it's impossible to enter the bathroom without producing muddy footprints on the floor. Hence, the usefulness of a bucket of water to re-rinse the floor every so often.

Power outages are frequent, the rains come and go, but the bucket endures forever.