Some Writing Work and Work in Progress

Public "Restrooms" in India

The other day, I decided to visit a Public restroom in a Railway station. This station, the Mumbai Central station, is actually a central station that acts as a starting point for a lot of journeys to cities and villages in Western India.

Now, if you have never been to India, you won't be able to even imagine what public restrooms look like: they are a cross between your worst nightmares of a dark, stinky place and the reality of a dismal, awfully horrid place. In short, no decent person would be caught with his/her pants down in an Indian restroom. And yet, this is exactly what happened to me. I had that extraordinary urge to urinate, and the station just happened to be next to the place I had gone to visit, so I pushed in, a knight in shining armour (you could say) out to vanquish his reservations of going into a P.R.R. (public restroom, Hah!) ...

Even before I entered, the smell hit me just below my solar plexus. It was a mix of ammonia, urea, mosquitoes, cocaine-addicts sniffing away, human feces, old ruins, damp, moss, and the ubiquitous Indian betel-leaf stains on the walls.

I put a hand over my nose, causing the air-flow to my lungs to shut down completely, and collecting my nerve, I just went in. Finding an empty stall, I ... oh, I don't have to be that graphic, do I? ...but what attracted my keen eye was the graffiti on the wall just opposite. There were amateur painters' drawings of busty, sexually provoking nude female bodies with huge penile structures through their genitalia, and telephone numbers of Anita and Sunita and others to call to get "100% satisfaction". A horizontal line at my nose level had this written under it: "If you can piss this high, join the Fire Brigade. It needs YOU!"

I laughed then, and in so doing, I shook, and wet my shoes with my own pee. Totally disgusted at my "pathetic" performance, I zipped up my fly and ran out of the loo.

- ##Dr.Taher##



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I do not suffer from insanity. I positively enjoy every moment living it!