Accidents of elimination

"Please avoid occupying washroom for longer time by making phone calls while in washroom. The person waiting outside may be having an SOS call."

Indians are not a humorous people, at least not in the back-slapping, hardehar way that Americans seem to be. And yet, this little bit of humor on the back of the door of my office washroom never fails to brighten what is otherwise a routine unpleasantry.

Alas, the circular on which this directive is issued is two pages long, two pages of dense capital text with nary another joke in sight. The scope of this missive is both exacting and hilarious. After all, even God needed only two tablets for the Ten Commandments. How many precepts of bathroom hygiene can possibly exist?

Many, of course. The circular touches on the etiquette of paper, of water sprinkled on the sink, and of brushing one's hair at the counter. It ends with a trite ,"Help us maintain the way you all must be maintaining in your own houses" which seems a bit optimistic rather than real. What do the HR managers at HT - or whatever toilet mafia put up the poster - know about our home bathroom hygiene? We could be apes (although come to think of it, this may be an unfair shot, since I know nothing about the hygiene habits of apes. They could be the exemplars of the primate community)

But that joke about the SOS call - to me it seems like the writers realize they're taking themselves a bit too seriously. And yet, they have to! It's both pathetic and human. On the one hand, it's a toilet. How clean will it ever be? On the other, we don't have to be animals about our most animal urge.

That single bathroom stall has been the site of more than the standard number of adjustment crises for me, most of them caused by acts of God and yet never expiated by the same. There was the time I wandered in on a Sunday to find the bathroom absolutely painted in pigeon feathers and bird shit. It was as if Trafalgar Square had been reduced to the size of a closet and relocated to our office. And yet, there was no sign of the actual perpetrators. Somehow, a pigeon (or an entire dovecote) had entered the locked and shuttered bathroom overnight, spent an evening enjoying its comforts and leaving signs of their existence, and then vanished. And where would those pigeons have gone? I was the first person to arrive at the office on Sunday. I was the first person to open that door, and very likely the last person to shut it the night before (let's not discuss what this suggests about my work hours and lack of alternatives). It was like Agatha Christie, if she'd dealt with topics such as the mysterious besplattering of public places.

Recently, I encountered a cockroach in that same stall. Since I've come to India I've been informed by numerous landladies - as well as by observable reality - that cockroaches, much like monsoons, are a fact of Indian life, and raging against them is a bit like raging against the wind, the tides or the human resources department. For a soft American, I'm actually quite proud of my response to cockroaches, in as much as standing absolutely still and not screaming can be considered a response.

On that fateful morning, I entered the bathroom, unbuttoned, and then spotted the roach. It was one of those three-inchers, with a gleaming orange chitin shell that crunches underfoot like a particularly crusty autumn leaf. It was also upside down, its limbs waving in the air like those of a drowning person trying to flag down a speedboat. It is a fact of roach physics that once they are upside down, they cannot right themselves without great trouble. This gave me an interesting angle - and a generous time window - in which to decide on the best method of elimination.

I seized upon the idea of tossing a paper towel over the struggling roach and then stomping indeterminedly all over it, like a performer from a drunken and angry version of Riverdance, until the roach was surely pulverized. Alas, the paper towels were out. I reached instead for toilet paper - a fatal mistake. The paper was small, the roach was speedy. No sooner had I dropped the little square over the bug - and yes, I admit my foot hesitated just a bit above its struggling form - then the roach used the paper as a platform upon which to right itself.

Suddenly, my adversary was moving. Pants still undone, I retreated to the hall to ponder my next move. Since this is the same hall frequented by the editor-in-chief on his way to the bathroom, it is not a stretch to say that my sudden terror of the roach put me at serious professional risk. What a crafty bugger, to use human standards of decency against me! I was more determined than ever to squash him. I tried to shut the bathroom door and trap him in the crack between threshold and portal.

Here is when I discovered something strange. The crack between door and floor was so narrow that when I shut the door, the roach was pushed out into the hall, like a whale flung ashore by a typhoon. Pants now firmly buttoned, door shut, I contemplated the roach as he skedaddled down the hall. He retreated from the fight. And I am not proud to admit that I - with relief - let him go.