Sopan Joshi’s “Jal Thal Mal” is a book in Hindi about the invisible connections that sustain us in our life on the planet. It shows how sanitation is not just a matter of public health but is linked to the water pollution and to the fertility of our soils. It tells us how we continuously ignore the triangular link of our excreta with our water and land. Excerpts from an interview with the author. Your book has an epic scale. It begins with the birth of life on Earth and goes on to the extinction of species. From microbes to blue whales. How does a book on sanitation become extensive yet integral in its approach? During my work as a journalist, I kept running into material that could not be accommodated in the reports I wrote. The material kept accumulating over the years. That’s the trouble with researching and writing on current affairs: you can only use material that has an immediate appeal and fits into a limited context. Books, however, have a longer life. You can broaden the context in a book. I was irked that most talk of science and environment exists in the lingo of specialists – and only in English.(Just as we have cultural imperialism, we also have science and environment imperialism.)

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