Washroom with a view

The last cup of coffee, steaming hot and bursting with the aroma of arabica robusta beans, had been a mistake. Before that there'd been milk with the cereal, a glass of orange juice, and because I needn't to pop a pill and keep the skin hydrated, a glassful of water. Usually, this should not have been a problem, but en route to office the heavens had opened up, the blast of the air-con was chilling, and, well, when a man's gotta go, he's gotta go. That the roads were jammed and the traffic stationary didn't help. Any diversion to a hotel to use its facilities was impossible.

As the cars inched slowly onwards, I spied a public convenience, one of several the government had imported ahead of the Commonwealth Games. Through previous experience I could have sworn it would be out of commission, but desperate times give rise to desperate hopes. Alas, it turned out to be locked, as did every one along that route, each of which I checked while getting increasingly wet.

I could imagine my wife chortling, for she'd been at the receiving end of something similar a few days earlier when incessant rains had caused a traffic gridlock in the city. "I've been at the wheel for three hours," she'd whined into her mobile on the occasion. Caught up at work, I might have replied with less sensitivity than she'd hoped when instead of commiserating, I asked, "Hope you have enough fuel in the car?" She'd tell me later, when we were talking again, that she'd tried calling her friend Padma, who turned out to be in Italy; the Sharmas, who weren't at home; and Rama, Chanda and Bebeji, none of whom was available at the time. "Trying to keep yourself amused?" I'd jested. "Trying to find out who was available as I passed by their homes," she snapped back, "I needed to use a loo."

I could sympathise with her predicament now, but more urgently, needed to check how she'd managed to resolve the problem. "Sheila turned out to be at home, but she asked me not to come over," my wife still sounded hurt. "Really," I said, "I thought you were friends." "We are," sighed my wife, "but Sheila and her daughter-in-law were having a fight at the time that was loud and dirty and which she didn't want me to witness." But my wife is anything if not persistent, so she insisted on arriving at her doorstep. Not only did she get to use the toilet, she also ended up having a cup of tea while waiting for the traffic jam to sort itself out. I might have rung up Sheila too, but I doubted she'd extend me the same license - especially if she was still having words with her daughter-in-law.

I was seriously considering the driver's suggestion of a local remedy to the situation when it flashed upon me that I could apply my wife's solution a trifle more ingenuously. Directing the driver to stop in front of a popular men's store, I darted in, only to find that, given the queue in front of the washroom, half the city seemed to have had the same idea, and the management wasn't looking too happy about it. In the event, I ended up paying for an expensive jacket to justify the use of its washroom facility. Any wonder I'm thinking of swearing off coffee after breakfast, at least till the rains last.