Every day, when Sreeja goes back home after work, she carries a bottle with her. It is not a water bottle, but a urine bottle. As a seamstress working in a one-room stitching unit on S.M. Street in Kozhikode, she can only afford to dream of a decent toilet at work.
Sreeja is one of hundreds of women working in commercial hubs in the city, who depend on bottles to relieve themselves. Some keep tubs, which they empty into nearby drains at the end of the day. “It is not that we don’t have alternatives. But, they are equally unappealing,” says Sreeja.
There are very few shops or shopping complexes on S.M. Street that have toilets, though the facility is mandatory as per building rules. While men make use of dingy gaps between buildings and bushes behind them, women don’t have that option.
“The monsoon months are the worst. Imagine walking in the rain for around 500 metres from one end of the street to the other to relieve ourselves,” says Sreeja. She is referring to the Sulabh Comfort Station on P.M. Taj Road, which several women depend on. But many are hesitant to use it as the entrance to the men’s and women’s toilets are the same and managed by Hindi-speakers who fail to understand what they say. The presence of drunkards is another irritant.
Some women occasionally go to nearby restaurants and hospitals to use the urinals there.
“But, the managements do not encourage the practice. Recently, a woman was verbally abused for frequently using the toilet in a hospital,” says Sindhu, who works in a small textile shop on Court Road.
For employees in one of the biggest wholesale shopping centres in the city, the issue is even more complicated. The complex, spread around four buildings with more than 500 shops and thousands of employees, has only two toilets.
One of the six-storeyed buildings has toilet blocks in three floors while the space on other floors is used as stock rooms. Of the three toilets, one is for women. But, it has been under repair for quite some time.
One of the two toilets for men has been temporarily designated for women, but men continue to use them. “We are scared to use it as often we walk in to find men inside,” says Sara, an employee in a textile shop in the building. She has to wait to relieve herself till she gets home for lunch or in the evening.
It is ironic that this happens in a city that was the first to have e-toilets in the country and where women went on a strike for almost a month demanding toilets.