One of my biggest fears while traveling in India is access to a decent toilet. While our homes and some of the places we frequent to, have decent toilets, traveling to certain parts in the country is still a nightmare. Try as we might boast about how much India has developed in the past many years, this is still the sad truth when it comes to our country. It is said that, no innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet system. It is in fact considered the top invention of the period. But sadly more than half our country and a third of the world still do not have access to it.
Toilet – Ek Prem Katha is a great effort that sheds some serious light on this very important issue in the most entertaining way. Akshay as the loving Keshav who has to fight tooth and nail to build a toilet (his Taj Mahal) for his wife, and Bhumi as the new bride Jaya, who is having a hard time adjusting in a house with no toilet, and Divyendu as the funny, loving and supporting younger brother Naru, play their roles to perfection. The moments in which Keshav is trying to help his wife out, and Jaya is trying her best to make things work are very heartwarming and tear inducing at the same time. To understand Jaya’s plight, all you have to do is remember that one time when you really needed to use the bathroom but could not find one. That is Jaya’s problem, except that at the end of the day we go home where we have access to our very own toilet, where as she is stuck because not only does her house not have a toilet but neither does the entire village.
While the movie is about the importance of having access to a toilet, it is also a sweet love story, which the film-makers do not forget till the very end. Keshav’s transformation from a guy who doesn’t understand why his wife is making such a big deal of something so trivial, to the man who finally understands her plight and tries his best to not only get (build) a toilet for her, but also for all the women in the village, is handled beautifully. So please do not pay attention to the negative reviews some of the critics have given this film, calling it a political propaganda among other things. We all know that we have a problem and it is about time we all did something about it, and Toilet- Ek Prem Katha is a great start for that conversation.
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