Didn't even see the week that went by! All I remember is that suddenly it was Sunday!! Then J had called. We planned to go pay a visit to our college.
Now J works as a sub-editor in one of the two newspapers in Chennai( There are other papers too, but they don't count). So he flops onto his bed really early in the morning (don't miss those last four words people..they are crucial) . But after MORE than a couple of cold calls I managed to wake my friend up from his God-knows-how -deep slumber at his flat about 10 miles away from my Hell-hole.
By 11 in the morning he was at the gateway of Hell and by 11:00:45 we were en route to what we knew as paradise. The plan was to spend the next couple of hours at college, visit a prof of ours, and then go off to a friend's place to get ourselves into really high spirits (pun intended back there).
By 5 in the evening, we were at our friend's place. This was right behind college. He's studyin for M phil at college. The plan was to get the vodka and have it there at his room.That plan somehow found its way down the drain(talk about bad planning!) S stayed with another S (they shared more than that single room,they shared their first name). We were going there for the first time. The minute we walked into that tiny room, the first thing that I saw was a sink near the right corner of the room. I looked towards the wall and I saw tiles that would have looked more at home in a kitchen. Wait a minute!! This WAS a kitchen!. I didnt see any other room. They were staying in a kitchen which tripled up as their living room, bedroom and what-not-room. I just sat there and wondered how I could call my place a hell hole when this was not more than a rat hole. J must have been wondering something close to that..but his tolerance levels are admirably higher than mine! S told us " You haven't seen the toilet have you? J check out the toilet, its great". Now after seeing the room, I thought the toilet would be worse than the public ones! I particularly thought of one of the johns in Desparado which looked more brown than even yellow. So I wasn't particularly keen.
S had extended the invitation to J and so he got up and went towards a narrow door in a not so far corner of the room. He opened the door and looked into(?) it. The first ten seconds after that was silent. " Hey F**k!" Now J does not get ruffled very easily. So this must have been something truly outrageous. This was how J described it in more or less his own words:
I opened the door and saw a long open corridor. At the other end I could see another narrow door. So i thought this was the 'great' part S talked about. You had to walk across a narrow corridor on the terrace to reach the bathroom. But then I saw that my way to that bathroom was blocked. There was something blocking the way. F**k man. It was the damn toilet!
There you have it people. If you looked out that door (yes 'out'. you couldn't look in), you would see a high wall to your left which housed yet another poor soul. to your right was a wall that came up to your chest. Over this wall, you could see other houses. And right ahead of you, a few feet away, there was this what do u call it, commode, shitpot, toilet?. There! Right There! Out in the great wide open. Above you had no roof to cover you! just the great blue sky! If you sat down to let go of something, then chances that a bird let go of something similar right onto you were pretty high! Worse still, considering that you would be downloading under the cruel scorching Chennai sun, you would get that lovely tan foreigners long for every morning for free! Man it looked so outrageous, absurd, MAN IT WAS FUNNY!
Writers and painters and all sorts of artists have written about being one with nature. I saw it with my own two eyes. And I didn't want a bit of that experience. Here I was thinking that I had seen everything..well..almost everything. Truth is, I hadn't. Maybe I still haven't. But hey, can it get any stranger?
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