Had Stevenson (Robert Louis) taken an Indian train ever, he would not have written this: “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” The greatness of the affair, my fellow Indian railway passengers would agree, ends the moment we fling open a toilet door. First of all, we have learnt by now that we shouldn’t do it as long as it is avoidable. But if we have to, we don’t do it without trepidation. Probability in an applied sense, says its mathematical definition, is a measure of the confidence a person has that a (random) event will occur. In the present context, that confidence is always very low and what we are likely to see inside the train toilet is mostly disgusting.

While various measures to ensure hygiene in train toilets have failed in the past, the Indian railways has a new one up its sleeve. Passengers with reservations on long-distance trains on the South Eastern Railway sector will now get bottles of phenyl-like substances to ensure hygiene in toilets. The experiment will start in the air-conditioned coaches on Duronto and other long-distance trains that take more than 30 hours to reach their destinations. If it is successful, it will be introduced in more trains.

There is nothing wrong with the measure — except that the phenyl bottle reeks of a symbolism of acceptance of incapability: railways’ to ensure hygiene and passengers’ to follow it. The same passengers back in their houses have clean toilets which they toil to keep clean. They don’t carry a phenyl bottle every time they flush. And the same railways in its offices try hard to keep toilets clean. It hasn’t given up and resorted to phenyl bottles yet. 

But despite being a first-hand victim of the randomness of that probability which lurks in flinging open a train toilet door, I would defend the passenger and vote against the move to give them a phenyl bottle each.

Indian is still a young recruit to the idea of sanitation in its modern sense. Less than 100 years old. All along before that toilets didn’t merit a mention. So much so that the lofty Mughals didn’t have toilets! At least so it seems. Check out the Red Fort if you have doubts (there are bathrooms though). Or the Agra, Allahabad and other forts. There are various versions of how the Mughal kings relieved themselves. But nothing is certain. While it is too much to believe that the zill-e-subhani would have walked around with a lota, the arrangements were certainly rudimentary. 

In this light, India as a country is not doing bad on the sanitation front. That a lot more needs to be done goes without saying. We can try. We should try. And curiously we don’t. But again, pray don’t give up on us by handing us over that phenyl bottle. This is not what Okhil Babu would have wished for.

Okhil Chandra Sen had written one hilarious letter to the Sahibganj divisional railway office in 1909. The letter is on display at the Railway Museum in New Delhi. This letter supposedly led to the introduction of toilets on trains.

Full text of Okhil Babu’s letter:
"I am arrive by passenger train Ahmedpur station and my belly is too much swelling with jackfruit. I am therefore went to privy. Just I doing the nuisance that guard making whistle blow for train to go off and I am running with 'lotah' in one hand and 'dhoti' in the next when I am fall over and expose all my shocking to man and female women on plateform. I am got leaved at Ahmedpur station.

“This too much bad, if passenger go to make dung that dam guard not wait train five minutes for him. I am therefore pray your honour to make big fine on that guard for public sake. Otherwise I am making big report! to papers."

If the progress we have made in learning English language is any proof, we would surely learn to follow hygiene too. Railways needs to come up with innovative ideas on imparting toilet training to its passengers. Continuous efforts, not phenyl bottle, is the way out. In the end, as Stevenson said “the great affair is to move”.