The commode seller of CuttackToilets of all shapes and sizes

The following is an extract from the travel book A River of Life: Travels through Modern India.

"You have been in India how long?" a man asks me.

I am sitting outside a cave on the fringe of Bhubaneswar. The caves are popular with tourists, most of them Indian tourists (the man who is speaking to me is Indian). The caves are set into the sides of two hills: Khandagiri, broken hill, and Udayagiri, sunrise hill. There are finer examples of rock-cut sculpture than this scattered across the Subcontinent, but this is my first encounter of such, and I have marvelled at the intricacy of detail that centuries of wind and countless inquisitive hands have failed to erode: a troupe of elephants; big bushy trees; horses and hunters in pursuit of a deer. The caves had been hewn from the rock by Jain monks several millennia ago, during the small centuries BC. There is a Jain temple on the summit of Khandagiri, another popular spot.

"How you are liking Indian toilets?" the man inquires.

It is a strange question, unexpected - we have spent minutes exchanging pleasantries and this is something of a departure - but he has good cause to ask: he and his family are from Cuttack, and the family business is the manufacture of commodes.

"Indian-style, Western-style, all styles we are having," he informs me. "Brothers, father, uncles, all are working same company," he tells me with pride.

"Those are your daughters?" I ask. A woman and two young girls have emerged from one of the caves. They are indistinct in the hot distance. One of the girls waves and calls out, then bounds off into the dark recesses of another cave. I think of heading that way myself: it is cooler there. The dark rocks around us drink up the heat of the sun and throw it back fiercely. Dead leaves and bushes crackle in the heat. Yellow butterflies with black freckles and black ones with slashes of crimson dance about it the hazy air. There is birdsong on the slopes above us.

"Yes, two daughters I am having," he tells me. "Here, I shall show you." He takes out an ugly, chunky digital camera and prangs it to life. He shows me images: of toilets, of all shapes and sizes. Where are the shots of his family? He is a hard-working entrepreneur. I guess this is his family.

"I think I prefer Western," I say. I'm not altogether sure I do - the Indian-style squat toilet has much to recommend it, such as lack of physical contact, better defaecating posture for the user - but something about his tone has made it a patriotic issue. He wants to know what is superior about Western toilets. "The fact that they flush," I say, "is quite useful."

"But we too are having toilets which are flushing. They are very wasteful - so much water - but certain people are liking these, and so we are making them. All kinds we are making, although Indian-style only."

He describes the types of commode his company manufactures: big, small, flush and non-flush, even a hybrid version that I haven't yet come across, a Western-style toilet with perches - the user squats on the basin. It is a bizarre conversation, though I like his energy. He has big but delicate hands, which he uses to sculpt his toilets in the air as he describes them. Fingers are splayed wide to depict big bowled commodes, then are suddenly drawn together to show me more bijou models. His hybrid toilet is traced in the air in a figure of eight pattern. Onlookers probably imagine we are discussing and objectifying women.

We are sitting on a bench beneath a tree. I am eating moist diamonds of coconut barfi, a snack-cum-lunch. I offer some to the commode seller. He takes and eats one, waving away flies that are also hungry for a sweet snack. After all the commode talk, I don't have much of an appetite. I offer him another.