A documentary that looks at how everything is closely connected has an episode on poop, tracing its journey from the human body to its place of final disposal. Interestingly, the narrator-reporter, talking to the person in-charge of the sewage disposal unit in London, remarks excitedly that this unit with its myriad pipes and canals was actually an extension of the human alimentary canal! From here, it journeys on in more canals and pipes to its final destination. And in the process, all poops become free of identities, merging as one. Including those of queen and commoner. That’s a metaphysical view, so to speak.

Amazingly, between the alimentary canal and the brain, a lot of stuff goes on. Sometimes our emotions and behaviour may be orchestrated by trillions of bacteria that reside in those winding tracts, propelling us to be what we are. The term ‘gut feeling’ comes from here, perhaps,