SUNDAY BYTES: Nature’s Call Has No Pause Button
A Smart City, a Tourist City—and the Search for Human Dignity
Dr Fiaz Maqbool Fazili
Four women lowered their heads.
I was driving that Friday, taking my wife and three other women to offer condolences to a family. Near the Toyota complex, something in an open field briefly caught my eye: an elderly man, trousers lowered, relieving himself.
I turned back to the road. Inside the car, all four women lowered their heads. No one spoke. Embarrassment, discomfort—perhaps even disgust—filled the silence.
But as we drove on, one question stayed with me: why were we embarrassed for him, and not ashamed of the city that had left him with nowhere else to go?
Nature’s call is not about manners or choice; it is a physiological necessity. The body does not wait for Smart City missions, inaugurations, security protocols, VIP movement, traffic restrictions or administrative boundaries. Nature’s call has no pause button. For the elderly, the need can be urgent. Prostate enlargement, bladder problems, diuretics, age, and monthly periods (diaper hygiene) and illness can make waiting impossible. Perhaps public decency had already failed him.
Later that afternoon in Srinagar’s commercial centre, I parked near residency road—where space for cars is organised and priced—and went to have my phone screen guard changed. “Can you please tell me where the nearest washroom is? Me and my child need it badly.” I was ashamed—not because she asked, but because I did not know where to send her.
I mentally searched the neighbourhood. A mosque came to mind—the instinctive answer for many in Srinagar when nature suddenly calls. But why should it be?
Mosques often generously provide ablution and washroom facilities, but they cannot become the permanent emergency substitute for municipal responsibility. A woman with a child—local, visitor or tourist—should not have to wonder where she is allowed to use a toilet.
A woman with a child should not have to prove her identity before finding a toilet. When I asked the shopkeeper what he did in such a situation, he answered without hesitation: “Masjid.”We have normalised an extraordinary situation: the ordinary citizen’s emergency plan is a mosque. But such generosity cannot replace municipal responsibility, especially when none is nearby, it is closed, or women, children and tourists cannot access it comfortably.
VIPs answer nature’s call too, but with vehicles, staff, security and access to offices, hotels and private facilities. Ordinary citizens are often left before locked doors: a man cannot demand a hotel washroom, a woman alone cannot knock at a stranger’s home, a family in traffic cannot easily leave, and an elderly person cannot always wait.
This remains an “aam aadmi” problem—and perhaps that is why it stays invisible.
Security matters, and traffic may need to stop. But barricades can stop vehicles—not bladders. During long halts, elderly people and travellers especially on highways or roads to tourist destinations often search anxiously for privacy because human needs do not pause for convoys. Sanitation facilities should be planned at strategic points along major routes and highways. We need security, but we also need humanity.
A Smart City must first understand the human body. It cannot be defined only by lighting, pavements, signboards or boulevards. A truly smart city responds intelligently to ordinary human needs. A city that can locate your car but not a toilet has misunderstood smartness.
A car can wait in paid parking; an ageing bladder cannot.The irony is painful: we can organise and price parking in busy areas, yet drivers, shoppers, women with children, elderly tourists and people with medical needs may still have nowhere to go. A city cannot celebrate tourism while ignoring this basic need. Kashmir may welcome visitors with mountains, lakes, gardens and hospitality, but paradise too needs public toilets; a tourist, especially elderly, a desperate premenopausal female may remember breathtaking views but will certainly remember being unable to find a washroom when desperate.
Schools, hospitals and offices: look behind the washroom door. The problem does not end on roads and highways. It enters our schools, hospitals, offices and institutions.
Every school should have adequate, safe and hygienic washroom facilities, especially for girls. Menstrual hygiene and privacy are not secondary matters. A girl should not have to endure discomfort, humiliation or health risks because the institution she attends has ignored a basic facility. Children, meanwhile, operate according to biology, not timetables.
A small child can suddenly say, “I need to go. “And when that moment arrives, the child cannot be told: “Wait until the meeting is over.”
Hospitals must be held to an even higher standard. In healthcare and institutional supervision, one learns a simple lesson: if you want to understand how an institution is truly functioning, look at its washrooms. Look at the floor. Look at the availability of water. Check whether the flush works. See whether the door locks. Ask when it was last cleaned. A shining reception area and a filthy washroom tell two different stories.
I have heard that a former J&K Bank chairman Mr.M.Y.Khan sahib, checked periodically whether washrooms in key premises were clean and functional—a small detail that revealed leadership. Principals, hospital administrators and department heads should do the same, because toilets often test an institution’s real commitment to dignity, hygiene and accountability.
This concern has been raised before. In June 2024, Greater Kashmir published my earlier piece on inadequate toilet facilities, and that July, Mr Sazawal echoed similar concerns at the KNS desk. The issue was discussed—but how many public toilets became functional afterward?Public concern often makes noise for a few days, then disappears into archives. But an elderly man’s bladder, or a mother’s need for her child, cannot wait for another debate. Human dignity cannot be put on file. As the Hon’ble CM reportedly said during a GCC delegation meeting, this is not an impossible problem.
We need an honest survey of Srinagar and major highway corridors: identify existing gaps, then act. Major markets, parking facilities, tourist destinations and highways should have clearly marked, clean, functional and regularly maintained toilets for men and women at reasonable intervals.
Hospitals, schools, colleges and government offices should be periodically audited, with cleaning schedules, inspection registers and clear accountability. A modest user fee is acceptable if facilities are genuinely clean, safe and functional.
In the age of smartphones, why not create a simple map-based tool(application) to locate the nearest public washroom, showing whether it is open, paid or free, accessible for women, persons with disabilities or parents with infants, and when it was last cleaned? That would be truly smart—not merely calling a city smart.
When I think again of the elderly man in the field, I remember not only the discomfort inside my car but also his, the woman with the child, and the shopkeeper’s one-word solution: “Masjid.” How long will we pretend this is normal? We should not ridicule someone relieving himself in the open without first asking what alternative he had. Public behaviour and cleanliness matter, but so does civic infrastructure. Often, the person we judge is simply at the receiving end of administrative neglect. The absence of a toilet is not merely a sanitation issue; it is about privacy, safety, women’s dignity, health, “izzat, aabroo, Satar, purdah”, and basic human rights.
A civil or smartest society in true sense is judged not only by flyovers and fountains, but by whether the elderly, mothers, schoolgirls, patients, tourists and ordinary citizens can answer nature’s call with privacy, safety and dignity—without being forced toward a field, drain, deserted corner or religious institution.
Nature’s call has no absolute stop while a real pause button; delay has risks. A Smart City that can find parking but not a dignified toilet must rethink its claim to smartness. Cleanliness without toilets is only a slogan, tourism without sanitation only an advertisement, and development without dignity no development at all. The elderly man, the woman with the child and the shopkeeper’s one-word replies all point to the same embarrassment: in our Smart City, too many people still have nowhere dignified to answer nature’s call.
Is anybody listening?
(The author is a lifelong observer of Kashmir’s social change, civic life, and intergenerational challenges.)
