Bathroom Attendants and the Whole Caste System Thing

You can’t “sweat the small stuff” when you are traveling in India, or you’ll completely dehydrate yourself within 24 hours. That being said, there are some things that are very difficult for me to adjust to and other things that are just plain annoying! One of the things I simply cannot get used to is airport bathroom attendants. It’s just bizarre to walk in to a restroom and have someone smiling at you and speaking to you in a language you don’t understand, especially when you know that whatever she is saying is completely unnecessary to achieve your goal in entering the toilet. Once safely inside the stall, I feel like the BA is listening to me pee and dig through my purse for a couple rupees to give her. I don’t mind giving her what amounts to ten cents, but it is just silly that she pretends to provide a service for this fee. I wash my own hands very well, thank you. And I know how to operate an electric hand dryer, even though they often slow the process by placing their hand under it to start the air flow. It’s not really the BA that irks me; it’s the fact that a position like that exists due to this caste system. Because there are, in fact, Indians who expect these services and would complain if the toilets were not attended.

I haven’t spent much time blogging about the caste system because it is a very complicated concept for a foreigner and I do not pretend to understand it. On my first trip to India, I was almost blind to its existence. I’m more aware of it this time around, but still not qualified to provide any sort of educated commentary on the matter. People asked me after my last trip if the caste system was “shocking” to me, but in the midst of so much culture shock, I hardly even noticed it. Now, I can see that there are “levels” of society and that, as an American tourist, I automatically take a temporary seat on one of the upper levels. At hotels, for instance, there are staff members who are obviously not permitted to speak to me unless I speak to them, and others who work silently in the backgrounds, never coming into contact with the guests. If I am speaking to someone in a service-oriented position, such as a driver, and a person in a higher level approaches, the driver will automatically stop talking to allow the guide to speak.

These are just my personal observations from my very limited experience traveling in India. I admit that I do not understand this and encourage anyone from India who reads this to post comments to help Westerners understand this system and its impact on society.

More on this later perhaps…