Dear Kunjuppu,
1. My village home had a kollaipuram which was so vast that it covered a large area with many trees of the wild variety (it is a different story that I spent a lot of time observing the kappalchetty pakshi which used to beg of some imaginery kappalchetty to give it some thing. It used to cry out from a small body high decibel sounds which will sound like "kappalchetty, kudoo, kudoo". To this day I do not know what it was demanding/begging for. There are many such bits and pieces of ever green memories). So s*****ing was not a problem for us. There were no bhangis removing it either. It was the all pervading sun who used to take care of the waste in course of time. But I have observed manual scavenging in other agraharams where also I have lived for a short while. Moreover in our agraharam people used to go to the riverside in the evening and morning (some people) to attend to nature's call. They had trained their bowels to make a call only at the appointed time. So my agraharam house still carries only pleasant memories for me.
2. While my intention is not to enter into an argument on this , I would like to state just this: in rural tamilnadu the task of clearing the human waste is not assigned uniformly to one community though champions of human rights would like us to believe it that way. So generations of condemnation is just an invention by arm chair champions of underdogs. I do not subscribe to that as I know the villagers well.
3. Once that condemnation of a group is swept aside from our slate , it becomes clear that it was a feature of the history of a society. Like Europeans did not know how to take bath by getting into a river for long. At that very point of time Indian civilization was celebrating a bath in Ganga and Yamuna as holy experiences to be gone through. So dear friend, these are part of history. When I read the history I learn valuable lessons. I do not feel ashamed that my society has this as history. All societies , all civilizations in the world had such moments of condemnable practices-condemnable by today's standards, condemnable with all the developments that have happened in the interregnum. So I move on. I do not expect that kind of episodes to repeat themselves in today's world.
4. My village house did not have just a kollaipuram. It had a thinnai which was the refuge for itinerant families (food included), It had a nadai above which on the first floor a kudir existed which used to get filled up with paddy after every harvest. During the year whenever you want the paddy to be taken to the nearest ricemill for hulling, which was 2 miles way, you have to just open a small lid on the ceiling of this nadai and lo and behold, paddy will flow through the orifice due to gravity. So the nadai in the ground floor was always dark and there used to live my poochandi when I was a very young kid. Then Rezhy was the place where we used to have our unjal. It is lovely to have a unjal in your house. It is an experience for which there is no substitute. My mother used to sit on the unjal and used to sing கதி எனக்கு உன்னைத்தவிர வேறில்லை. பாலகோபாலா உன்னைத்தவிர வேறில்லை. பாற்கடல் சயனித்த பரமக்ருபாநிதியே, காக்க இது தருணம் கண்ணா நீ க்ருபை செய்வாய். உன்னை..... My grandma used to sit on it and recite the paasurams for me. Thaazhwaram was the place where cattle feed like punnaakku and paruththikottai used to get stored for the cows which were there in the kottil. Madappalli was the sAmrAjyam of my mother and her writ ran large inside that. She was an autocrat allowing no one any liberty to meddle with anything there. So friend, it was a wholesome experience. Please do not trivialize it by looking at the kollaipuram alone.
I can write more about this But I stop with this for the present as I have problems with my internet connection. Thank you.
