No Toilet, No Marriage?

Source: <Toilet: Ek Prem Katha>

Romance films don't usually revolve around a toilet.

But that's the angle in Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (A Love Story), a Bollywood film. And the box office has been flush with success.

The plot is pretty straightforward: A young woman from a village marries a man from another village and moves in with his family, as is the custom.

Source: <Toilet: Ek Prem Katha>

She's horrified to learn that her husband's family doesn't have a toilet in their home.

The only way she can relieve herself is to join the women of the village, who rise at 4 a.m. every day in order to defecate in the fields while it's still dark (for privacy). And then they wait until sunset to use the fields again.

While they laugh and joke along the way, she feels humiliated and wants the privacy of a toilet.

Source: <Toilet: Ek Prem Katha>

But the villagers aren't on her side. Families in the village, including her in-laws, firmly believe that having a toilet in your home, where there are a kitchen and a prayer room, is unclean.

After arguing with her husband and delivering an ultimatum — no toilet, no marriage — she decides she has no choice but to leave the man she loves on the very first day of their marriage.

But her husband sets out to woo her back. And that means changing his mind about the need for toilets. Not only that, he sets out to change the community's toilet position as well.

Source: <Toilet: Ek Prem Katha>

This selfie is in the toilet: Actor Akshay Kumar poses with the object of his bride's affection in the new movie Toilet: A Love Story.

T-Series via YouTube/Screenshot by NPR

This isn't just a made-up story for the movies. In a case of life imitating art, a week after the film released, Indian courts granted a divorce to a young woman on the grounds that her husband hadn't installed a toilet in their home, causing her much agony during their two-year marriage. In her complaint, filed in 2005, she said he had ignored her repeated requests for an indoor toilet.

Once the movie released, many felt the movie furthered the government's pro-toilet campaign. The movie lights up an issue that's never discussed on the silver screen —the challenges of creating the infrastructure for toilets in rural India and then persuading people to use them.

Source: The New York Times

According to the government, 47 million toilets have been built in rural village communities and public spaces across India ever since Modi launched the Clean India Mission (Swatchh Bharat Abhiyan) initiative in October 2014. As a part of this mission, the government has promised to construct more public toilets and has launched the ODF (Open Defecation Free) campaign, an initiative to keep public spaces clean and free of excreta. A new government-sponsored app called "Find A Toilet" urged people to help locate, rate and review public toilets for factors such as cleanliness and hygiene.

Source: BBC.com

JOMOO has been providing cleaner bathrooms for people around the world, and this year, JOMOO released its innovative solutions for "Toilet Revolution" — to build well-furnished toilets for schools and rural areas meeting different types of needs, moreover, to deliver the concept of cleanliness and hygiene.

JOMOO public toilet in Suqian

JOMOO public toilet in Wuhan

Toilet is a beautiful thing. We hope everyone in this world can have one.