I grew up in an age, when houses had no toilets, attached. Instead toilets, had pigs, attached. Such was life, simple and rustic. Gradually, life moved into a faster lane as amenities came along. Every house, now has modern toilets. I was intrigued, by the fact that no matter how you flush, water always remained in the pan. I was keen to know, the how and the why. A bit of research later, I realised that in the old days the English used to discharge all waste, directly into the rivers. By the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries the Thames had turned into the Ganga of the twentieth-twenty first; a filthy and foul smelling cesspool. The English needed a safer way to discharge their waste. The modern toilet with the commode directly connected to the septic tank, was thus born. But, there was a problem. The pipe that carried the waste to the tank, also acted as a conduit for the foul gases, to find their way up and pervade the house. At this point, an inventor, Alexander Cummings stepped in and twisted a pipe to create what has come to be called the s-bend. The lower end is connected to the commode and the upper end to the pipe leading down. The result is, when the flush is pressed some water, per force, remains in the lower bend and the pan. And this water prevents the foul gases, from escaping into the house. Thus, the simple s-bend has kept the gases in the tank. And detached the pig, from the toilet!
Inventiveness is not confined only to scientists, but there are people everywhere, who twist things for their own benefit. I recall a client, who came over. After he discussed his case, he casually took out a rupee coin dangling on a nylon thread through a hole, drilled in it. And in his hands it bobbed up and down like a yoyo. “How did you make the hole?” I question. “Don’t you know we are goldsmiths ?” he retorts. “The coin is now worthless”, I tell him.” “Certainly not” says he, with a twinkle in his eyes, as he leaves the office, “I shall demonstrate how it works” are his parting words. A few minutes later the phone rings. “Dotor” says a familiar voice at the other end. “I am calling from a pay phone. I inserted the coin in the slot. I heard the ring, I pulled up the string and the coin is now back in my pocket, but I continue to speak, as you can hear. The process can be repeated any number of times. Do you still say the coin is worthless?” Well, I had no answer. Now of course, with the advent of the mobile, and the demise of the public phone, the coin on a string, has also bid farewell.
Another day, another client who has been implicated in a fight, over a bullfight drops in. As he sits down he enquires “Dotor, do you eat ‘ganvtti combi’ (country fowl)? If you do, or if you need for any party, just tell me.” “Do you have a chicken farm?” “Not required” says he. “How will you get them?” “Catch them from the roadside.” “But will the owners not miss them?” “When a fowl goes missing you always have the jackal or the palm civet to blame” he explains, matter of fact. “But how do you catch them?” His response is uncanny. “One can see fowls scraping, almost anywhere along the road side. When I need to catch some, I scatter paddy nearby and the fowls come clucking in. I go on my way, only to return, an hour or so later. I see a few fowls lying motionless, but I must not pick them up, like a thief. So I shout to the boys playing in the fields nearby, “Look here, there are dead fowls”. The boys come running in. “They are dying everywhere these days,” says one shrugging his shoulders. “But they have to be buried otherwise the sickness will spread”, I tell them. “You do it, if you so wish” says another “I certainly will, I say, as I pick up the birds, and proceed home, where I place them under a bamboo cage”.
“It is dawn when I wake up to a cock a doodle do. Everything is fine, the fowls are prancing around” he continues. “But the fowls were dead” I say to him. “No, they were merely sleeping. A night’s sleep was enough to revive them.” “Are you a magician?” I ask him. The trick, he explains lies in what is fed to them. “I grind a few sleeping pills and mix it with paddy before scattering it. And the birds fall for it, literally”. He looks at me as he adds, “Actually I kill two birds with one stone. I get my birds but the villagers think that I have done a good turn by burying the dead!” “But one must be careful” he cautions “Once, we slaughtered a few roosters in their sleep and enjoyed the ‘xakuti’. And we continued to sleep for two days!”
Human ingenuity seems to find an answer, to every why and every how.
(Radharao F.Gracias is a senior Trial Court Advocate, a former Independent MLA, a political activist, with a reputation for oratory and interests in history and ornithology.)
