Bathroom blushes

   The best protected place during a rocket or bomb attack is the bathroom, the defence expert said looking at the French window with glass panel- splinters of this glass will seriously injure you, if not kill, in case a rocket hits or a bomb falls on the hotel he said taking out a thick adhesive tape which he told me to paste criss-cross in several lines on the huge glass. This will ensure that the glass does not fly off in case……

    

   I spent several nervous days following the instructions whenever I would go for bath in the huge room number 102 in the 300-room Kabul Hotel. Ears already trained to hear firing of scuds and falling of rockets in Kabul, the time spent in the bathroom would make me nervous- what if a rocket indeed hit when I was in my birth day suit in the bathroom? You can’t remain in the bathroom for long?? And what if the bomb fell on the bathroom itself? The news next day would be that the journalist was found dead in the bathroom.. the thought of dying in a bathroom while reporting from a war-torn country --……wierd worries would crowd the mind. The worries faded away with time. Nothing happened in Kabul at least with me in the bathroom.

   Bathroom back home in Delhi a year later, however nearly killed me. That was way back in the late 80s.

   It was a day in November. Parliament was in session and there was an unusual rush of visitors - we were among the few to move in the brand new society. There was no proper road to reach the society.  There was no water supply- one had to collect water from the bore well and electricity was erratic. Visitors planning to move in would make a visit for a glass of water. Irritated at the delay I closed the bathroom door and looked if there was enough hot water in the brass drum that had an electric element fitted to heat water- Indian ‘Jugaad’ technology. Switched off the heater and lifted it to pour water in the bucket and I knew I was about to die. Electric shock on watery surface--in bathroom. No chance of escape. Eyes desperately looked for a dry surface- no chance. The current threw me with a great force to the wall- a bone protruded from the shoulder. Thrown curled on the floor- I knew I would soon be dead. Mysteriously, the current had suddenly gone. The wire had snapped from the plug- pulled by my leg. I was alive.

   Bathrooms became topic discussion in our society last week when a young housewife slipped and broke her leg in the bathroom with no one else in the top –fourth floor- and the flat door as also the bathroom doors locked she yelled in pain- heeeeeeeeeeeeelp. Someone noticed, heard the cries. People collected, broke opened the flat door and broke the bathroom door. Nooooooooooooooo, she yelled again- please call some ladies---- the men desperately looked for some women who could put some clothes on the lady in excruciating pain. Should there be phones fitted in bathrooms as hotels have? Should you carry your mobile phone in the bathroom? Should one not bolt the door? Should?????????

   Bombs or electricity, bathrooms have always been the place I enjoy the best. Alone, you are all by yourself. All great ideas, thoughts that my brain ahas ever generated were always in the bathroom. ‘Let noble thoughts from the universe come to me’, as the Rigveda says—Aano Bhadra Kritavo Yantu Vishwataha’..

   Then wasn’t it in his bath tub that Archimedes shouted ‘Eureka…?’ The great US Fed Chief, Alan Greene, I am told would dictate to his secretary lying in his bath tub!