A Toilet Story!
Certainly not a bedtime tale
Toilets. Or, lavatories, latrines, restrooms. Whatever you choose to call them by, I regard toilets with great admiration and reverence. So much that I stand rooted, overwhelmed and teary eyed, when I enter one which sparkles like chrome-plated semis, floored with white marble so radiant it outshines my future; commode tanks equipped with multiple silvery push-down buttons for the required amount of water to be flushed; urinals robbed from the future which miraculously start spewing water immediately after; cubicle walls devoid of any ‘I luv Reshma’s, or ugly cucumbers or scribbles urging me to ring random numbers up.
You can probably perceive my fascination for toilets. In fact, there’s a colloquial term for toilets that I use to imbue the phrase with a sense of decency and mitigate the sense of awkwardness whenever the word “toilets” itself is used in conversations. I call it, well, “the download room.”
You can probably guess why.
Either way, any place I visit, be it a temple or a friend’s home or a food-stop on the highway, is brutally judged by the upkeep of the relieving facilities present there. So much that there’s a certain check-up process I’ve grown to employ, scrutinizing each and every aspect of the room to ensure there’s no Loch Ness Monster paddling silently in the commode, or any mutated cockroach with spider legs waiting to greet me at the wash basin, or any Komodo dragon ensconced within the door jamb, ready to pounce at my face right when I shut and bolt the door from the inside.
You may wonder why I’m so paranoid. That’s because I’m highly entomophobic. In layman’s words, insects send me crawling to Mars with dread. Bring an adult cockroach towards me, and what follows is a majestic display of screams, and futile attempts to shove the cockroach away, laden with wicked threats so hollow they make an inflated balloon feel full. I pride myself in being hypersensitive towards the presence of such alien beings around me. But, when you arrive at a place notorious for insects; brimming with them at night, you’re bound to collapse by what they call, a sensory overload.
Which place am I referring to? Our beloved hostels, of course!
And, in particular, the one part of my hostel, stepping into which my sensory awareness is heightened to supernatural levels is — you guessed it — the infamous line of stalls in the washroom, each containing its own unique version of hell.
Every day, the rooms in the corridor undergo a thorough inspection of the aforementioned beings of peril, to stamp an “area clear” affirmation in my mind. Six rooms stretch across the corridor, all arranged one beside the other, with the doors being the only barrier between a puny, high-on-paranoia me and creepy-crawlies lurking inside, waiting for their prey to ignorantly enter the room, and bolt the door, only to be mercilessly ambushed.
Let me take you on such an “inspection”, to reveal what horrors hide behind the innocuous closed doors.
Enter the aisle of doom, and the atmosphere assumes a grim hue of suspense; of water dripping in staccato tones and of the doors creaking ever so slightly in the wind.
As the voices of my hostel mates trail away, the final hint has been issued to me: I’m on my own in this island of terror.
I cautiously advance towards the first closed door on my right, taking the empty, silent surroundings in; my mind screaming to be wary of air-borne pests with swords protruding from their behinds and extra-large moths with wings large enough to silence lambs. As I push the door in steadily, the second half of the statement comes alive, accompanied with crickets and their elder brothers, grasshoppers, hopping about merrily inside the cubicle. One is even wading through the treacherous waters in a half-filled rusty, grime-stained bucket used by the Britishers.
How in the world did these god-forsaken beings make their way here?!
Immediately, my mental barricades spring into action, blocking any further motor movement directed towards the cubicle. I mutter curses at the damned creatures and grab the door to bolt it shut.
Moving on.
My strides now markedly more rapid, I approach the second door. The growing silence gushing from it unnerves me, in stark contrast to the previous encounter. Reigning in my frenzied imagination, I unlatch the door, and nudge it open with my forearm. The initial hush is comforting, but the feeling is swept away abruptly as my eyes are greeted by a couple of spiders nestled snugly on entangled strands of web on one corner of the cubicle.
Manageable I guess.
I grumble to myself and enter the room. What I never expected to see was a whole cluster of those 80-legged crawlies huddled near the doorframe, cowering in fear at the sight of a ginormous human who had unceremoniously gatecrashed their home. Sighing to myself in indignation, I place a precarious finger on the handle to open the door, and leap out. Hopes of attaining salvation are gradually being nibbled away at by the damned insect world.
And, at just about that time, a feeling of dread, a sense of urgency spurs me to hasten the inspection and get it over with. An epiphany strikes me down, something which should’ve kept me on my toes from the moment I entered the corridor: the absence of the Notorious Cockroach, Underlord of this dark sector.
Rumors have it that it lurks in the shadows of the cubicles and urinals, patiently waiting, pruning itself and whittling its speary antennae and spiky legs until its prey darts into the room unbeknownst of the Rakshasa now grinning toothlessly at his vulnerability, rising out of the shadows, ready to ensnare and bring down the human, ensued by a victory jig around the fallen victim trembling in fear.
Rubbing off the shudder, I turn towards the cubicle at the far end of the corridor now, the one with a window staring into the murky darkness outside, with sounds of fluttering leaves, howls of agitated dogs and high-pitched twitters of birds coming together like a terrifying orchestra; one you can’t ever turn a deaf ear to. My nose isn’t spared either, with a torrent of nauseating odor streaming from the fourth cubicle, even with its door bolted.
Which retard has left it open for the world to admire?! STUPID A-
A threatening knock from below impels me forward towards the last cubicle, to focus on my current objective, sweat beginning to race down my forehead. Barging into the door with my shoulder, I take a fleeting glance around to uncover any hidden devils.
None. No lizard scrambling for cover. No spider tiptoeing its way up to its web. No extra-large moth darting towards me.
Strange.
Something seems very off. My glance is brought to a halt by a brown, fungus-like outgrowth near the window sill. A nest, a rather nasty one, with black holes gaping out of it at skewed angles. Perched on top, was a hornet: a giant one; the kind you see from 23 miles away through a telescope and mutter, “NOPE. THAT NOT GOOD.”
One whose stinger is long enough for your dead body to be impaled through, rubbed with spices and set upon a blazing fire for a yummilicious barbecue.
One which can shoot through your mouth and blast out on the other side, and return through the same bloodied bio-tunnel to its nest, in the same time it takes Quicksilver to put on his safety glasses and begin his playlist.
I freeze. Rooted. Petrified. Fossilized.
The wasp’s gaze interlocks with mine. My eyes scramble to decipher its intention, all in futility.
Murder? Torture? Mockery? Enslavement?
My mind is muddled with a billion thoughts of the possible ways I could be exterminated. A sudden, sharp buzz yanks me out of my grave reverie. The wasp shoots up from its nest, and whizzes into the dark through one of the holes in the window. Silence reigns. I finally break free from the shackles of crushing anxiety, relieved at being let go unscathed. I amble out of the cubicle, strangely feeling cold. And that’s when, something hits me. Hard.
The need to relieve myself. I can hear the enraged primitive beast inside me, screaming in desperation…
Faaaast, you fat mound of rotting cheeseballs!
It takes my entire willpower to stay sane, as I rapidly decide on which other cubicle to go to. I couldn’t take any more chances. Once entered, there’d be no turning back. The leftover doors now float in my vision, shuffling like a magician shuffles his overturned cups.
Which one..which one?! Oww..argh, THAT’S IT! I’m going in!
Frustrated, scared and holding on for life, I sprint towards the 3rd door and slam it inside. Jumping in, I bang it again on the doorframe and bolt it shut. Settling in as fast as I can, I turn on the tap, and finally, let go.
Wheeeeeew. Relief weighs me down with comfort, with all the knotted tension and fear unraveling. Breathing slows down to silent puffs of air, and eyelids droop to a squint, when something waves in a blur like thin twigs. I will my eyes open, and they resolve the twigs to be…antennae probing the air. They sprout from a bulbous, dark head, followed by a brown streamlined body clinging to the door with spiky legs. I gulp down the fear blocking my throat. I could even see it sneering at me, mocking at the apparent hapless situation I find myself in. The silent laughs of malevolence make me go insane with disbelief, and I reduce to a crouch in a dark corner of my mind, open, unguarded and unprotected, to be scourged, whipped, flayed and feasted upon. It is the notorious Underlord, the You-Know-Who of bathrooms, the Cockroach.
