Ganjam has to be the open defecation capital of India. Dawn and dusk are not poetry-inspiring here. These are times when entire villages descend on to the roads, unabashedly squatting with lungi, towel or saree hitched at the waist. The sight and the stench are sensory offences that scar; forget the hygiene and public health fears that may arise from them. In fact, the scale of open defecation is such that one knows that he/she is approaching the village nearly a kilometre away with the road shrunk in half from both lanes by faeces in multiple stages of drying. My deputy editor has written about it with as much disgust as concern.

So, when the driver of the taxi I had hired on one of my visits to Sheragada block office actually honked for a bike to stop and allow him passage on a narrow village road so that he may not smear his tyres with shit, I knew it was time I spoke to a local about this. My captive local was the driver. I began by asking him if he was from one of the villages nearby. He said he was born in Berhampur but his family had roots in one of the villages near Aska. "Do the people in your village go in the open?" I asked him. He immediately protested that he was from Berhmapur and had a functional toilet at home. I noted that he was offended that I should associate him, in whatever degree, with the practice. This was my window of opportunity. I pounced. "So, aren't you appalled by the practice? Why is it so common here? Everybody seems to have enough money to at least have a sanitary toilet. Yet, they go in the open, on the roads."

He said it has been a practice since long here. Even though they have the wherewithal, the villagers won’t construct toilets, not even when the government pays them to. "They will always say that the money is not enough to construct a toilet. Yet, they will not turn it down," he said. After a few seconds pause, he added, "It is the women who defecate on the roads the most." I reminded him that we had come across men and children squatting earlier that morning. He hesitated a bit and said that the women talk to each as they relieve themselves. It is inexplicable, this form of socialising. Don't the men talk as well, I ask. The answer is a firm no. "They just go. That's it." I wonder if this notion of his stems from a deep-rooted patriarchy at function, even in the concept of open defecation.

There could be any number of reasons why a person would choose to defecate in the full glare of headlights. One, the onus of flushing and cleaning a toilet every time he/ she does his/ her business, especially in places where the water has to be brought from a distant source, is just extra labour  for those who fetch water for household use. On the road, out in the open, there's no need to flush. Just a bottle of water for ablutions will do. Two, it may actually could be a social function as well. Women, especially in a feudal and patriarchal set up, have clearly demarcated territories to socialise. In the confines of a village with limited options, the roads at dusk or dawn could be just this kind of space.