Reader's Diary #2213 - Ruth Guthrie: Night on the Mosquito Toilet

I guess it's pretty brave to wrap a whole short story around a woman in an outhouse while dealing with the runs and mosquitoes, but Ruth Guthrie's "Night on the Mosquito Toilet" instead feels more grounded in reality because of these details than it does a bold choice. 

While this poor, unfortunate soul is in this predicament, she's not a lot else to do but reflect on the day past. She's at a tourist retreat in India and she's mostly dwelling on her husband's behaviour toward a young girl who begged them for a banana. You can tell that despite her own temporary condition, she's quite aware that the girl's situation is anything but. She feels her husband had been unreasonably cruel. Interesting though, a small detail is revealed toward the end in which the woman herself is shown to not always having been above cruelty and violence herself.