The public bathroom is a lovely place to revisit yourself, it can be your own personal space, it can be your picture perfect communal neighborhood, and it can be Martin Luther King's dream.
Before we get into the bathroom, let's talk about the sort of people who visit the bathrooms. Well you have three kinds of men a) Short black guy - most interested in what’s going on in the other cube. b) Mr. I is too tall for this c) The hardworking 'I'm involved in this' kind of man.
In these three categories you can fit the entire world population that uses public restrooms. You have got the Prime Minister, Adolf Hitler and Swami Narayana, all falling into these categories. there are no other categories and if your saying hey wait a minute I do it this way, well my friend get a freaking health check up done you freak!
What's amazing about the men's loo is the powerful sense of individuality it gives you...especially compared to the opposite sex. Now the opposite sex have got the bathroom figured out all wrong. You never see a lady use the public bathroom alone, they ALWAYS have to go along with their friends or as a 1970's Hindi movie calls them saheli's. Now along with these Saheli's all unfinished conversation is completed in the ladies toilet, all the updates on who what where why are done here. "This guy..." "I was like..." "That was so gross" are words you will here at a ladies toilet. It’s different across the corridor..this is what you'd hear in a men's public loo --- -------------- FLUSH. Not once will you ever hear the words " C’mon Rick let's go to the toilet and take a piss" but you'll definitely here the ladies going Let's go Polly to the loo before boss comes back from Lunch...titter titter.
Coming back to the individuality, this is it, this is your zone, you are one with the universe, and nobody can take this solitude while you leak.
There can be some uncomfortable leaks, for example suppose you’re a trainee, just joined the big sales team and you've just been through a fancy presentation telling you about who the goddamn president of sales is. You absorb and then you want to...well not absorb, so you go to the bathroom and just before you are entering the zone the door opens and in walks ...yes the goddamn President of Sales. Moments like this can fail you and your member is suddenly in training as well because he doesn’t know why he's there in the first place.
Old brick and mortar companies understand this and the angst a trainee has to go through while taking a leak next to the President. So they have ..Get this “covenanted” loo only for General Manager's and above.
Back in 1056 BC when I was a trainee I joined a company with covenanted loos, great thing I say no uncomfy moments just chill
Theatre loos are the best. You walk into a cube and lo! There written write above the rusted faucet are the lines Ricky loves Rita. Now for the life of me I can't figure out why would ricky immortalize his love in Anand theatre above a frigging cube, I mean there he is standing doing his thing and somehow he is overcome by a sudden emotion of uncontrollable love and he jots down his love for Rita.
Rita on the other hand is in the ladies loo going "I was like" 'and this guy" ""it was so gross".
Another line you get at theatre loos is "Sexy Gigolo Rakesh 939162180" Now rakesh has all his priorities messed up, this line should have been in the goddamn women's loo not here. Now ricky is getting even more excited he cuts out Rita's name and writing Rakesh's name.
So it goes.

So here it goes, thousands of years back there were these philosophical dudes in India called the Sadudes (pronounced Sadhus), they would sit around and write all this cool stuff about Karma, Nirvana, Fate, Destiny and Balance. They put all this stuff in cool sounding books called the Upanishads, the Rig veda, the I am Sama veda, Atharva veda etc . This would serve as fodder for grunge band members and the Wachwoski brothers to make a lot of money thousands of years on.
Our hero by the way is a young Sadude called Ved Vyas, Ved vyas sees the light through all the purple haze, he says "you know what, I'm sick of this Karma shit, I'm gonna write a friggin war novel"
The other Sadudes give him the look,the shoulder, the arm .
He goes on to outline the novel having married women who have sex with gods, rape scenes, men turning into eunuchs, kids born from eggs and yada yada yada.
In the stunned stoned silence that follows Ved Vyas knows he is in trouble when the head Sadude gets 'pissa da off' and accuses him of blasphemy and threatens to issue a fatwa against him.
Wise words fly thick and fast, one dude brings up the controversial story of that mickey guy.
For those who came in late: Mickey was a "oh mickey you’re so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind" nitro junkie, who robbed the rich and gave to the poor and pocketed 75% in between.
Mickey had a bad night one day was Ivana humpaloted by the local cops and saw the light of day, he got up the next morning and said you know I'm gonna start channeling my rage , I'm going to write a friggin war novel and I'm gonna have a cool pseudonym to go along with my Italian shoes.
Thus ladies and gentlemen "Val" mickey was born. Valmickey wrote a great paperback bestseller called the Ramayan, which sold many thousand million copies.
Like all good stories come to an end Mickey's past caught up with him , the Sadudes gave him the cold shoulder once he confessed on the rocks that he used to get his rocks off by robbing from the poor and giving to the rich ( he was too stoned to tell the difference).
Mickey died an unhappy death ( I never knew that there was a happy one!) neither a robber nor a sadude.
Cut back to the present: Ved Vyas is a little unerved by the mention of Mickey in the matter; he realizes he would be boldly going where one man has already gone before. He thinks out aloud “oh! what the hell these Sadudes are really losing it, I'm gonna specially bring this up in my book where I'll have this pain in the ass Sadude who makes his best student cut off his freaking finger ...yeah go figure these dudes out.
So well he sits down and starts to write....
"lets see now we need a title something grand...hmmm lets try Bharat...hmmm not grand enough...lets try Big Bharat...hmmm…the Big B...nah to filmy…. lets try The Mahabharat.
There we go."
"Now lets put together a story of two brothers, make the bad brother blind so that the sympathies are with him, make the good brother infertile ..... give him two wives to highlight the irony and lets just go with the flow.
Half way through the book , remember just before the war is about to begin, our dude looks up from all that heady writing and says "Hey wait a minute , lets back up a page at a time, this book has no redeeming characters, the only redeeming character the eldest Pandav Yudhishter also falls prey to all the lies and deceit and lies to his ex guru (someone he loves and respects) about his son dying , so whose the hero!!!!!!
So here's where the problem comes, fast forward to the 21'st century you see it everyday, it's happened to you, its the difference between the guy who comes first and the guy who falls flat at the starting line, it happens on exam day when you forget all the goddamn formulae, it happens just before that big sales call ...its called cold feet.
Ved Vyas is the first recorded case of a guy who got cold feet.
Halfway through his epic he realizes nobody is going to read his book. Readers want the dope on nirvana, fate and Karma, not some funky shit soap opera, human minds aren’t evolved for this , they would probably evolve in say the late 21'st century where the medium of entertainment would be the television, but not now.
So Ved Vyas has a dilemma, some cold guy called frost brought it up later when he spoke about the two roads that diverged and all that jazz.
Ved Vyas did something cooler he didn’t choose a road, he took the middle path. He said you know what; readers are going to always love philosophy so let’s give them that.
Hmmmm lets see this charioteer dude could really shape up to be a stellar candidate for a true hero lets make him boring, worldy and wise, hey lemme take this crayon and color him blue just to make him super different ...okay where's my post it, here it is...let's write this down: must need to make some edits to Krishna's story later.
So ladies and gentlemen of the jury, half way through the book, just before the war is about to start, for no apparent reason (and the first documented case of cold feet in literature) Arjuna the main character at least till that point gets....yes cold feet. Because of which the charioteer goes into a long, fascinating discourse about yes you guessed it nirvana, fate and Karma...yield not to unmanliness Arjuna ACT! ...so it goes.
Once Ved is convinced that he has built in enough philosophy to make the other Sadudes leave their chillums and clap hard, make the general public radio ga-ga about his mojo, he goes back to writing his epic.
...and he writes one mother of a bloody epic: Sons, fathers, brothers, thighs all get butchered.
The book is finished, printed, goes on to become a bestseller, no fatwas, no lynching. Ved Vyas retires from writing, lives his last years with the satisfaction that he boldly went where one man had gone before, but he returned to tell the tale.
So it goes.



Akshay Pratap Singh Deo


This story is a figment of my imagination and I would be disappointed if I woke up one morning to find 6 half naked Shiv Sainiks outside my house baying for my blood.