There are problems. There are obstacles. And then comes that stream of trouble which turns your head upside down while smashing through you with all the energy it can muster by thunder God’s grace. Now read ahead and dive into my small life and the big worries I daily live and sleep with.
We were in a cinema hall to watch a movie obviously. My father, brother and me. During the interval we went to pee and as usual the urinals were occupied by folks who had been holding their piss in their bladder ever since they were born. After finally finding a vacant spot to project my gun and release the uric acid and other useless salts, I could not pee. Why? Because someone was standing behind me and playing with his zipper. How do I know what was he doing when my focus was on letting my pistol launch the watery missile? The sound of a moving zip was reaching my ears, idiot. The man adjacent to me was whistling to remind himself of his childhood pee pee routine. The atmosphere eventually became so tense that the pressure of my urine relapsed and all of it went back to the bladder before I could stand there for two more eye blinks. I washed my hands to pretend I was done and waited till everybody left. My father and brother had done their share of wetting the sewage pipeline and gestured me to come out. But I was not done. Not until the whole toilet turned into a silent meditation room I could finally pee. And it happened. Nobody was whistling or playing with his zipper and my psychological stress levels became normal. In a few seconds or so I wrapped up my package inside the underwear and rushed back to my seat before the last advertisement finished. After returning home my father asked what took me so long during the interval pee session and I told him I can’t leak it out when somebody is in my vicinity. This strange demand of peeing privacy has always been my top priority all through these years when my matchstick was becoming a lollipop. The reason for this might be the annoying neighbours in public toilets or the primitive impulse to protect my balls from environmental threats. I don’t care whatever the cause is as long as I wait and do my shee shee in total uninterrupted isolation. At times when there is a lot of crowd to bother my little one, I sheepishly walk towards the doored commode and enjoy my “me time” there.
Every doctor will tell you how dangerous of a habit smoking is and what all are the different types of cancers it can cause in Homo sapiens. But besides being a highly efficient tool for passing time, this stick of nicotine and tobacco is beneficial to humanity in a supremely under-appreciated way. Before you ask, I’ll tell you. It makes you poop. Not just poop for the sake of poop but pooping until your gut is hollow enough to make your voice echo once you’re done. That’s the power of a cigarette. The problem arises when I go to the toilet and my several feet long fleshy pipe is free of waste but the burning cigarette is only half way to its butt. What to do with the remaining half? This question leads me into the self deprecating cycle of quitting smoking altogether because it is a bad habit and might get you to the cancer ward of a hospital in future. For keeping this promise of making the smoke scratches on my throat vanish, I have planned to throw away the leftover cigarette many times post the act of pooping. But never once the hole of commode has received it. The only way to beat through this issue of the half burnt cigarette is to smoke and get over with it. I do so because I believe in miracles such as taking a teeny tiny little dump after I am done taking a big gigantic one. There must be some sticky shit particles lying in the deep and dark corners of my colon and I want to get them out of my system. So I fill my lungs with smoke to tar the hell out of them but very rarely something comes out of an already vacated butt. Meanwhile the cigarette is smoked till its butt and I wash my rear hole with a fascinating thought. Lungs get sacrificed for the functionality of intestines. Aren’t our organ systems designed to work in conjugation? Tenth grade science teachers were right indeed.
Recently I opened up my Kindle which has enough books in it to last more than one term of our country’s government. But the terrible thing is that I was unable to read any of those. The new books I start can’t make me peacefully sit all through their last page. Every line that an author writes strikes me as an experiment and the narcissist in me says you can write better than this for sure. The book eventually gets shut with my Kindle and mental excitement both turned off. I later find my pen to write and to compensate for my sanity. I have seriously lost count of how many times I have done this job of starting a book and not finishing it because the writer was not able to engage me. Some people are hard to please in under special circumstances. This trend progressively upped its speed the day my writing skills began to grow at a pace faster than a puma’s heart rate during a run. The only solution I have found here is to reread the books I like and not clog my neural network with average pieces of poorly crafted literature. My Kindle must have been frustrated of getting new books in her memory when her master has not even wrapped up the last week’s collection. An average writer is the one who tries too hard to make a reader not go to the loo until his book is read till the end and placed on the bookshelf it originally was picked up from. But a smart writer is the one who giver his readers a dose of uniqueness every time he thinks a reader might lose even an ounce of interest in his work. The average writer is a lazy writer and the smart one on the other hand; he stays on his toes in order to keep his fans on the corner of their chairs making them wonder in awe. And more awe. All those wannabes who post pictures on Instagram with coffee mugs and diaries think they are prolific writers. But in future they will turn into average ones whose books will lie partially read in my Kindle. Nevertheless this tiresome experience of mine has led me to write more and improve more because a reader should never take you casually. Unless in case you want them to gift your books to others because their brain got constipated after going through the first paragraph of it. At times I even go to the extent of proudly boasting that some of my blogs on this free WordPress domain are way well written than the hard cover bearing extensively published and marketed books which failed to impress the reader in me.
This final rationally incomprehensible issue has crossed my consciousness on so many occasions that I was compelled to find a way out of it. Whenever I wash my hair with a shampoo, a fraction of the total volume remains in the sachet. Earlier I used to sit in the bathroom and imagine what all could be done with it. But one day there was no soap for me to clean my oily back. That was the day I took out the leftover shampoo and applied it in replacement of the soap. And to my surprise it worked better than Dove, or so I convinced myself. Since then the shampoo which stays in the sachet and is unable to make its way to my head, it is wisely put to use for various purposes. Sometimes my feet get antidandruff treatment while the dead skin is getting scrubbed along. On other mornings my pubes get smooth, silky and shiny. Thanks to the gratitude of shampoo cum conditioner for making my secret bush farm strong and firm under which are housed my millions of supremely talented future gene pool carriers. At one point of time I used the whole sachet on my body despite the availability and accessibility to soap. My tiniest of the tiny hair rose in attention as if I had sat on a frozen lake with my naked ass. Why? Because the shampoo was summer special and was meant for cooling the scalp. I also use the residual shampoo to wash my underwear while I bath and have several times emptied the entire sachet into our washing machine. The clothes always come out clean to their innermost fibers with a fragrance unexplainable in words which in turn makes shampoo the best alternative in absence of a detergent. This problem is no more a problem but on some nights I lie pondering if I could collect all the remaining shampoo from the sachet to fill an empty bottle of that brand and that specific type. Will it be a profitable business idea in the long run to help misery stricken poverty ridden kids in Kenya? I am yet to receive an answer on this from Bill Gates and UNESCO.
There are a lot of ideas, concepts and situations which bother me but the above four were the ones that could make it to the top. Some people are hard to please, remember I told you. In case more such issues arise in future, my creativity will find an outlet for work and even though nothing magical will come out as a result, at least I’ll solve some non-quantifiable mysteries of our universe. Wherever he is among the stars, Stephen Hawking will be beaming with pride when he’ll see me take his legacy forward.
Arpit Chhikara 