Showers, taps, mugs and buckets!

Swanky hotels come with their share of challenges. Swankier the hotel, greater is the challenge...often from unexpected quarters. You drop your clothes, and in all your primal finery, get into this most inviting bath tub and draw the curtains. If you think you can get into a warm invigorating shower quickly, you can't be further away! You are suddenly faced with a bewildering array of options- an overhead shower, a hand-shower hanging off a snake-like pipe, a nozzle closer to the tub with two spouts, a couple of levers and of course, color codes for warm and cold water. And no, this isn't your home. The bathroom does not come with the basic fixture you need- a bucket and a mug!
Gingerly you pull the lever and turn on the tap. Wrong choice- the water spews from the lower spout...adequate for a foot massage perhaps, but little else. Worse, the bath-tub seems to be filling up, the water quickly encircles your feet and the rest of the tub....showing no signs of draining.
Shaken and stirred, you try other options....but to no avail. The water refuses to squirt out of any, but the lower spouts. Like Rodin's "The Thinker", here you are...on your haunches...in the bath-tub, trying to make sense out of it all....!! If I were you, I would put my clothes on. It's going to take a lot more time and effort to piece this puzzle together....and may be, get expert opinion too. Of course, you cast aside this well meaning advice and plough on.
By now, you've started yanking at the second lever. Wrong choice! It's like a multiple-choice examination with negative marking! The punishment for an incorrect choice is swift and severe! Something springs into action all of a sudden....water comes hurtling down from the overhead shower. It catches you totally off guard...and tonks your scalp with this enormous gush of ice-cold water...right out of a water-fall! You let out a strangulated yelp...and in an abrupt reflex action...try and get out of harm's way. Jumping out of a bath-tub is clearly hazardous. You bruise your knee against the tub's walls, get entangled in the curtain, let out a manic howl...and scramble to safety. The waterfall continues to gush in the background showing little empathy! Your howl hasn't gone unnoticed. "Is anything wrong?" a voice comes from outside. "Everything is wrong!" would be the honest answer... of course!

A bucket and mug would make life easy for some of us. It may look inelegant, but you don't need to exercise your grey cells...at least for a bath. Thankfully, in India, there are no swanky hotels in pilgrimage places. It could be Sringeri or Tirupati or Haridwar...doesn't matter. The bathroom has the basic fixture - a bucket and a mug and yes...the water drains off the floor too. Bathroom karma....follows you doggedly though. You take a quick stock of the surroundings...scanning for creepy lizards and lurking, over-sized cockroaches. Satisfied, you now scrutinize the plastic mug. It has a battered look- frayed, discolored and sickly. The handle is long gone. Worse, a crack runs all the way...slicing the entire mug! Your effort to fill water...is slippery and unsuccessful. Before you can raise the mug to yourself, it drains off the entire side...leaving but a few droplets on your person! A couple of attempts...and you give up. It can't work this way. You try some ingenious technique...to fold the entire mug into a smaller cone and cover the crack. It works, but the bath is slow and uninspiring. Eventually, you make the ultimate choice- throw the mug away...and go for the bucket in full. As the water comes cascading down in one enormous sweep, you feel like pounding your chest like Tarzan or Bheema! The bath couldn't be more primitive......or more exhilarating!

Taps have their share of quirks. Once they spring to action, you can't stop some of them.  To your horror, you can turn them a full circle. One turn and another and another...like the head in the "Exorcist"... it keeps rotating, the water keeps spouting! It does look like this one tap can deprive the whole of humanity....of water! So let it be! Many experiments later...and after much water has literally flowed below the bridge, you find that if the tap is precariously anchored at the 6 o' clock point, it actually stops!!! Thank God for small mercies!

You can't turn some taps. It's a different design- they work like a piston; a little press and they squirt out water.....the volume determined by the pressure of the hand and the duration. It requires mastery to get the technique right. Till then, it is an incessant struggle- impatient stabs yield a few trickles as returns. If you get frustrated and pound the tap with all your might...you're in for trouble! The tap throbs and vibrates in protest- filling the entire bathroom with this deafening, high-pitched whirr and boom. It suddenly feels as if you are in a boiler-chamber with all the heavy machinery around you. I told you to be nice to taps...didn't I?

Taps are like your kid- unpredictable. Like an hour-glass, you watch the desultory flow filling up the mug. You feel you could grow a full stubble  to get one mug-full. The tap waits for the opportune moment and compensates for the gloom with a sudden spurt of enthusiasm and over-effusive love! And now, you have got  the front of your designer shirt all soaked!! And how are you going to explain the situation at the meeting...you've left midway?

Trains in India are not for the finicky or for the hygiene freak...especially if you need to be on the train for two days and have to use the toilet. Indian-style toilets are equipped with a mug. Thankfully, the mugs are not made from plastic and can't be cracked. But everything in India needs to be chained- be it elephants or cows or water-cooler tumblers; otherwise, they simply walk away. I have no idea why a decrepit steel mug on a train would walk away....but they do; hence they need to be chained. The problem now.... is the length of the chain. At best, it is less than a foot in length! How are you ever going to extend this mug and put it to any use....squatting from where you are!!!? It seems such a hopeless proposition! "Acche din aane waley hain...."- yes, that is the hope which keeps us going. I don't ask for world hunger to be solved when that "accha din" finally dawns. Can I put in one small request though....may be...may be...the length of the chain can be extended from one foot to perhaps three feet!? That will suffice!!

There is an urgent need for standardization across the globe when it comes to restrooms, bathrooms, taps and faucets. Till then, we will end up looking stupid and culturally uncouth. Urinals are notorious- we have no idea whether a urinal is based on a self-flushing mechanism or requires human intervention. One airport boasts of a urinal which requires human intervention- it actually has a foot pedal! And how did I find that out? Yes, it isn't courteous, but I actually peeked at my neighbor! There was no other choice!

This swanky hotel in Delhi actually has venetian blinds in the restroom. To add to it, the venetian blinds are turned by default to the outside world. What that means is... you wouldn't  know...but the rest of humanity in the living room... can actually watch you going through the motions in the restroom!!! No pun intended...but you get the drift. Why would someone in his right frame of mind...want to have a window to the world at large from the precincts of a toilet!?
I read this most inspirational quote from a Master. He simply said "When you eat...eat. When you walk, walk!" You can't improve upon this teaching...it is "mindfulness" at its best. On the same lines, can we tell this swanky hotel in Delhi... "when you go...simply... go!!!" Can they allow us this privacy...please?