NEW DELHI: One of the must-see stops on the list of many tourists here is an unusual little building tucked away at a far end of Delhi: a toilet museum. Toilets may have been the butt of many jokes for years, but the museum has taken the once taboo subject out of the water closet and made it an object of tourist curiosity. It also strives to make a serious point about the dignity of the poor.

The Sulabh International Museum of Toilets tracks the history of toilets from the basic burnt brick drains in India in in 2,500 BC and the chamber pots of the Middle Ages to the high-tech waste disposal gadgets in submarines and spacecraft today.

The museum helps lift the lid on the world of toilets through an inventive use of photographs, copies of old loos as well as trivia on toilet humour, technology and etiquette through the years.

But the museum has a serious purpose. It is part of a wider effort by an NGO, Sulabh International Social Service Organization, to set up a string of public toilets across the country where many of the over one billion people still relieve themselves on roadsides and behind bushes.

The museum is one way of building awareness about sanitation and hygiene in the country. Curious visitors to the museum chortle their way through as they read about a mediaeval mobile commode in the shape of a treasure chest which the English used while camping out when hunting.

Amid the array of toilet and chamber pot replicas lies a model of Louis XII’s high-backed wooden “rumble” throne which also served as his toilet and prompted a jester in the king’s court to chide him for “defecating in company”.

Also sitting on glass tables in the museum are an American Portapotty and a futuristic space age gadget called an “incinolet” from the United States which burns human excrement into a spoonful of ash. The museum is filled with trivia about the world of the toilet, otherwise known as the commode, bog, loo, dunny, convenience, privy, hiding hall, john, private chapel and necessary room.

Down the years, there have been as many shapes and designs of chamber pots and commodes as there have been names. Queen Victoria’s toilet was decorated with gold while Queen Elizabeth I and James I had cushioned toilet seats with lace trimming.

People in mediaeval Europe had chamber pots camouflaged in the shape of a giant leather-bound English classic on a wooden stool, ornate sofa chairs or even giant globes sitting on elaborately carved wooden frames. In the nineteenth century, chamber pots were more like works of art with fancy dolphin, lion and floral designs on them. “The bowls were so colourful that some suggested to use them as soup bowls,” Pathak said.—Reuters