TL;DR: This isn’t about a late-night train. It’s a metaphor for my never-ending procrastination, the kind that stretches through midnight and has slowly turned me into a night owl.
I was trying out slacklining, that strange activity where you try to walk across a thin strip of webbing without falling off, when a couple of tourists asked me where the nearest public toilet was.
They weren’t foreigners. They were probably from Tamil Nadu or Karnataka. It was around 8 PM, and neither me or my buddies could think of a public toilet around us that was actually open.
We can think of the ones that started building, but that the ones that actually finshed and operational.
There was one right next to us. It was closed.
I noticed the urgency in the woman’s eyes. Her friend was the one asking me, probably on her behalf. I felt bad that I couldn’t help. The best option I could think of was the nearest mosque, where I knew there would be an open toilet.
And that got me thinking.
Our public facilities suck.
Fort Kochi is a place where tourists arrive every single day. There are antique shops, cafés, old buildings, churches, beaches and all the other mesmerizing touristy things that make the place what it is.
But when nature calls, none of that matters.
When that urgency starts knocking at the door, having a good time becomes considerably harder.
I’ve experienced this myself, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.
I know we generally avoid the shitty talk. But is it really such a taboo topic that we can’t discuss it seriously?
Every healthy human being uses a toilet. It’s one of the most basic requirements of living in a city.
Before thinking about building more public toilets, maybe we need to get rid of the inferior mindset around talking about this basic human need.
Sanitation isn’t a luxury. It’s infrastructure.
This isn’t a case of the local corporation simply refusing to spend money.
There have been repeated attempts to build and improve public toilets around Kochi and Fort Kochi. There have been government projects, private-partnership proposals, smart sanitation projects and new tenders. In 2025, for example, C-HED tendered the construction of two public toilets in Fort Kochi, with a total estimated cost of about ₹20.7 lakh. Kochi Corporation has also explored private-partnership and BOT models for larger public-toilet projects. (C-Hed)
And yet, you can still find public toilets that are closed, poorly maintained or simply unpleasant to use.
That made me wonder:
Where exactly are we failing?
Is it corruption?
Is it contractors cutting corners?
Is it bad design?
Is it maintenance?
Is it water?
Is it sewage?
Is it vandalism?
Is it all of them?
Maybe we’re asking the wrong question.
We don’t necessarily lack the intelligence, engineers or manpower to build something comparable to public facilities in places like Japan or Singapore.
Perhaps the real problem is that we don’t yet have a system capable of keeping such infrastructure working in our environment.
And that distinction matters.
Here’s where things get complicated.
India has a complicated relationship with public hygiene.
People spit.
People litter.
People throw things where they shouldn’t.
People misuse public infrastructure.
And, occasionally, someone will do something so spectacularly disgusting that you begin questioning the entire concept of civilization.
But blaming “Indian culture” doesn’t solve the engineering problem.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that a good public toilet shouldn’t depend on everyone behaving perfectly.
Because they won’t.
Not in India.
Not in France.
Not in Japan.
Not anywhere.
If you’re designing public infrastructure, you have to design for the worst reasonable user, not the ideal user.
That’s where the interesting engineering begins.
I came across videos of self-cleaning public toilets in Paris.
The idea is fascinating. Paris has a large network of automatically maintained public toilets, known as sanisettes. The newer models have automatic cleaning and disinfection between uses, with the main cubicle taking around 30 seconds to become available again. But they are still serviced by maintenance staff several times a week for cleaning, consumables, garbage and repairs. (Paris)
For a few minutes, it looks like the bathroom is cleaning itself.
It sounds perfect.
Except it isn’t.
The more I looked into these systems, the more I realized that automation doesn’t magically solve sanitation. Public toilets can still become dirty, smell bad, break down or become unusable.
Technology can make cleaning easier.
It doesn’t eliminate the need for good design, maintenance and operations.
So a “self-cleaning toilet” probably isn’t the answer.
A toilet that is extremely easy to clean might be.
That distinction seems important.
Suppose I wanted to build a single 24/7 public toilet in Fort Kochi.
Immediately, the questions start appearing.
What if two people use a one-person cubicle?
What if someone uses it as a place to drink or take drugs?
What if someone becomes unconscious inside?
What if someone spends an hour inside?
What if somebody spits everywhere?
What if someone deliberately blocks the toilet?
What if someone leaves human waste on the floor?
What if the water supply runs out?
What if the sewage backs up?
What if someone vandalizes the sink?
What if someone steals the fixtures?
What if the power goes out?
What happens during the monsoon?
What happens when salt air starts destroying everything?
What happens when the humidity is 95%?
What happens when someone throws a plastic bottle into a drain?
And then there is the uncomfortable question of security.
You can’t put cameras inside a toilet.
So how do you know whether someone inside is simply taking a long dump or has actually collapsed?
Occupancy sensors?
Motion detection?
Emergency buttons?
External cameras?
There are solutions to individual problems.
But the real challenge is designing the whole system.
Even if we copy the technology, we can’t copy the environment.
Fort Kochi has its own constraints.
Water availability can be a problem.
Coastal groundwater can have salinity issues.
Sewage infrastructure isn’t something you can simply assume exists everywhere.
Then there is Kerala’s heat, humidity, monsoon rain and coastal salt exposure.
Put electronics, plumbing and hundreds of strangers together and you’ve created a surprisingly complicated engineering problem.
A public toilet isn’t just a room with a toilet inside it.
It’s a tiny piece of urban infrastructure.
This is the part I’m becoming increasingly convinced about.
Instead of treating every public toilet project as a one-shot construction project, perhaps governments should treat some of them as experiments.
Build one.
Measure it.
See how many people use it.
Measure water consumption.
Measure cleaning frequency.
Measure maintenance costs.
Record what breaks.
Record what gets vandalized.
Find out how long cleaning actually takes.
Then improve the design.
Build version two.
Measure again.
Then version three.
It’s basically product development.
Except the product is something everybody needs and nobody particularly enjoys talking about.
The goal shouldn’t be:
“We built a toilet.”
It should be:
“We built a public sanitation system that remained functional after being used by thousands of random people.”
That is a much harder problem.
And probably a much more useful one.
I don’t know yet.
That’s the honest answer.
I’d like to explore whether there is an opportunity for a company that works specifically on these kinds of civic problems.
Not necessarily a company that builds toilets.
Something more like:
Find a neglected public problem → research it → design a solution → prototype → work with the government or other institutions → deploy → measure → improve.
The difficult part is obvious.
Government.
Land.
Procurement.
Politics.
Contractors.
Funding.
Maintenance.
The usual collection of things that make simple ideas extraordinarily complicated.
But perhaps that’s exactly where the opportunity is.
I don’t know yet.
For now, it’s just another rabbit hole I fell into at midnight.
And eventually I decided to get off the train and go to sleep.