Complaining letter that got toilets installed on India's trains

This 1909 letter from Okhil Chandra Sen to the Sahibganj divisional railway office in West Bengal is credited with instigating the practice of installing toilets on India's trains. The image presented here is the version displayed at India's Railway Museum.

(via Neatorama)

My belly is too much swelling with jackfruit [lettersofnote.com]

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: india • toilet • transport

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

BijouxBoy

Lord that was funny. What a day. From bad to worse. Too much jackfruit.
http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo

What beautiful Indlish!

: D
- http://magicbelles.com Nathan Barry
  
  If someone does make it into a font, please call it “Indlish”!
Mark Dow

I’m hoping Next Media Animation will do a CGI re-enactment in sepia tones, with a bit of steampunk and Bollywood flair.
http://www.facebook.com/ted.mills Ted Mills

“All My Shocking” will soon be somebody’s Tumblr site. In 1…2…3…
http://magicbelles.com Nathan Barry

What a fantastic typeface too, someone please make it into a webfont!
Steven Vanderveer

How was that letter produced? That font can’t possibly be someone’s actual handwriting…
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  How was that letter produced? That font can’t possibly be someone’s actual handwriting…
  
  It says that the original is in the archive, so that’s probably a hand-lettered poster for display. Painstakingly hand-lettering a complaint to a civil servant, however, would not seem out of place in India, particularly in 1909.
- Into_anus
  
  A copy of the original typewritten letter can be found on the following link, there are a couple of differences in it too which I guess the “hand letterer” introduced:
  
  http://indrasinha.com/men-of-letters-okil-chunder-sen/
gwailo_joe

This is all kinds historical wonderful: for myself, when running with Lotah and occasional Dhoti I am always endeavor to not be exposing all my shocking…

It is my sincere hoping that these are the persons to get the proper filicetious recommendations in future livings…

Edit: never run with a lotah. Period.

‘occasional’ dhoti wearing could get one arrested however; but perhaps not in SF…
Daemonworks

All your shocking are belong to us.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.
http://codeflow.org/ Florian Bösch

And that is how you get shit done in India.

But wait a second, so a guy has to go to the toilet, and since he didn’t factor that into his departure calculations, the conductor whistles the train to go without him.

Then he threatens to make it public (that the conductor made the train leave on time) and hopes the conductor will get a big fine…

Makes perfect sense to install toilets after that. The solution to trains leaving on time is to install a toilet. Ever since trains in India are late because they have a toilet.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Abdul-Alhazred/100000416725737 Abdul Alhazred

By the context, I read “Lotah in one hand and Dhoti in the next” as something quite shocking indeed.
However, the dictionary says Lotah is a “globular water container” and Dhoti is “A loincloth worn by Hindu men in India”. Given the seriousness of the letter, it certainly makes more sense, although I personally prefer my initial reading for the comedy value. I was just waiting for spaghetti to fall out of his pocket too.
- Paul Renault
  
  While I couldn’t recall what these were called, I suspected that either the lotah or the dhoti was one of these:
  https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lota_%28vessel%29#Cleansing
  
  Now you can have a visual idea of what was going on…
retepslluerb

female women? So I guess they had male women, too?

No, seriously, why “female women”? Is there a grammatical construct in any of the languages the gentlemen grew up with that would lead to such a translation?
- RadioSilence
  
  female woman in the opposite of mailman.
claybob

Pretty amazing that India’s rail service sparked so many people into action. Gandhi, this guy, and I wonder how many more.
AlexG55

I don’t know any Indian languages, but I can imagine a language where the word for “person” generally means “man”, and to say “woman” you would say “female person”.
Paul Renault

I am forgetting to be saying that I was being reading that letter in Chilly Beach’s Constable Al’s voice…
http://video.ca.msn.com/watch/video/constable-als-vacation/16bi5b08w
Bonus, he is being wearing a dhoti in this episoding.
bobchadwick

The toilets on Indian trains still look like they were installed in 1909.
http://www.facebook.com/Theismisacrime Stephen Bullock

Remind me never to eat jackfruit…
http://www.geekforce.com Hugh Johnson

Wow, reads like a trouble ticket email I get from our helpdesk.
Seriously.
Fallandmisstheground

And by toilet, you mean a hole cut in the floor. A very “refreshing” but slightly disconcerting experience, relieving one’s self with the tracks rushing underneath.
pthree

Who knew they had babelfish in 1909.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Z2PCUJLFNNZNVRIBXBER67IBTI petr

is a hole on the floor of a moving train more disconcerting than a hole in the floor where the pigs come looking up at you in anticipation?
Stranger Stranger

Cant stop laughing for a moment :)) damn there were his guts displayed in the letter, dont know what he dispayed in the station :))