Pragya Thakur, the BJP MP from Bhopal is a woman on a mission; while her daily regimen includes the consumption of cow urine for medical purposes, she has made it crystal clear that cleaning toilets is not on her to-do list. “I have not been elected to clean drains or your toilets. I will honestly do the work for which I have been elected.” Had she been an Eminem fan, she may have rapped, “Yo, read my lips, I don’t have time for this shit.” This makes sense: given the generous salary and perks enjoyed by our MP’s one would hope Ms Thakur and her ilk would focus on big-button issues like the Union Carbide clean up, instead of mucking around with a broom and Harpic like Hema Malini. Consult Pragya to get your priorities right, Hemaji, and forget about photo-ops. Unfortunately the top brass were not on the same enlightened wavelength and Pragya was summoned to party HQ where she got a dressing down on the subject of Swach Bharat from her boss, J.P Nadda.
Her aversion to potty issues was shared by the Italian PM Zanardelli who visited the town of Matera located in the instep of Italy’s boot way back in 1902 and was horrified to discover that the locals lived in caves and made potty in the open. He returned to Rome overcome with “not just amazement, but deep pity” and a promise to build new railways and enact land reforms which didn’t happen. John Murray’s guide declared Matera a “dirty city with the most uncivilized lower classes in the whole of Italy.” A local legend tells of a little boy left alone in the family cave while his parents took the cattle to graze. In his hunger, he rummaged through the larder and managed to swallow a gold coin; you can imagine the situation when Mum & Dad got home. His anxious mother rushed him to the local quack who prescribed castor oil and a close watch on young Paolo’s bowel movements… the family surname is the literal translation of “gold coin shit”. I swear I’m not making this up and FYI, cowdung is smeared on the cave walls for insulation from the cold, so we have a lot in common with rural Italy, all things considered.
This primitive image was humiliating for the Fascists who were in power, since the sophisticated luxury connoted by Ferrari and Maserati didn’t quite gel with the Materan proclivity to defecate in the open. Mussolini connected the town to the Apulian aqueduct providing Matera with running water, but the Fascists were stymied by cave makeovers. Eventually they decided to forcibly relocate the locals to modern apartments, but the peasants were used to living with their cattle and old habits die hard. Moving to an apartment meant that the living room was a little more cramped with the larger animals housed in the balcony. The law of unintended consequences kicked in and when the Housing Minister was on his official tour, he was horrified to find his Zegna suit spattered with cowdung which had mysteriously dropped from the heavens.
In 1945, the political dissident, Carlo Levi who had been exiled to Matera published his autobiography, “Christ stopped at Eboli” with graphic details of “a world that rolls on independent of their will, where man is in no way separate from his sun, his beast, his malaria” and this turned the spotlight back on Matera. By the turn of the century, jazz clubs had sprung up, artisanal winemakers were storing premier grapes in the caves and many of them were converted into luxury hotels and spas. When Matera was chosen as the location for Mel Gibson’s “Passion of Christ”, the wheel had turned full circle with the swish set paying a fortune to live in a cave.
On a recent trip we toured the open air museum where some 1,500 cave dwellings honeycomb a steep ravine. First occupied in the Paleolithic Age, these limestone caves were scraped out by peasants using simple tools to form living spaces in medieval times. Today, these refurbished caves are Europe’s most exotic experience and the primitive Materans are admired for a sense of community values and commitment to sustainability with a superb rainwater harvesting cistern. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Musssolini. Being called a troglodyte (cave dweller) is no longer derogatory but actually a badge of honour.
Our Matera hotel had just five elegant rooms dug into the soft limestone with a magnificent view of the city. Elegant designer lighting played over the contemporary artwork on the stone walls, flanked by a state of the art Apple TV; before you ask, there was free Wi-Fi. In 1993, UNESCO officially designated Matera as a world heritage site and the transformation of the shame of Italy into the pride of Italy was complete.
Maybe Pragya needs to rethink her lunar ambitions and focus on the basics?
