i was attacked by a toilet flush

If you think the title is a little bit too difficult to believe or unrealistic, my friends you are sadly mistaken. Yes I was attacked by a bathroom flush. It happened while I was on a train to secunderabad. I always found train toilets filthy, smelly and poorly maintained now I have just added a new word to describe it- dangerous. It was half past 10 and I was going to use the toilet before I slept. But the queue outside the bathroom was enormous. Even after 15 minutes of sticking around there, a guy was still ahead of me. He was standing right outside the doors ready to pounce into the toilets just as soon as someone would exit one of the toilets. But the people occupying the toilets were in no hurry. So I decided to check out the toilet in the next compartment, lo and behold one toilet just got vacant just as I went there. Around the time when everyone goes to sleep on a train the toilet seats are as hard to get as an IIM or IIT seat. So anyway I did my business in the toilet and like any good citizen wanting to keep the government property clean I pushed the flush button – BIG MISTAKE.
Then there was pandemonium in the toilet as the flush button was in my hands, it came off. And the water was everywhere; I tried putting the flush button back but the more I tried to fix the situation the more it worsened, there was water all over me and not a single drop went into the toilet bowl, where it is supposed to go. And finally I almost fixed the flush up with a minor plumbing work of my own; just a few drops were dripping. (Not bad work for an amateur plumber) so the worse was yet to come when I was out of the toilet I checked to see how bad the situation was. I wore a black t shirt so the shirt look pretty much dry, the pants on the other had was wet in all the right place, to make the illusion of me wetting my pants. So I began walking towards my berth, the people who saw me outside the toilet, waiting there for more than a quarter of an hour (pacing up and down like a new father outside the hospital’s delivery room) and suddenly I disappear and when I came back my pants were wet. Looking back I think I should have done some explaining. Its not like I wanted this to happen, who would want that (I don’t go to sleep every night checking off the “I was attacked by an inanimate object” column) but with me these things happen, is it because I’m unlucky or is it just another hurdle life throws at us ,I don’t know but its an experience I can remember for a long sad time. Be sure you can have the same experience. The train I got in was sabari express coach number s4. the bathroom to your left when you go there through s3. (for reference of any plumber who might read this)


Oh and p.s I never fully understood the expressions "a hurdle life throws at us". Why would life do such a thing? I mean, they say life is a rat race and how are rats supposed to jump over hurdles let alone evade them when life keeps on throwing them at you? Silly language, English is!

a case of curious identities

One would think, the purpose of a photo identity card is to establish the identity of a person. But the meaning of the identity card obviously got lost in translation with the government of our great nation. I say this because when my mom got her voters card (in Andhra pradesh) she went down to the registration office because she thought she got another woman’s voter’s card. My mom’s name is Magi Justine, but the card read – “mega jestis”. (I know it seems like a super hero’s secret identity!) She might as well have worn a cape and jumped off a building yelling “mega jestis to the rescue” than argue with the registration office clerk, that the card got her name wrong. Their big argument was “the picture is yours so it’s okay”. But the photo was a masterpiece of it’s own right; painters can get a person’s likeliness wrong, but for a photographer to get it wrong I mean what are the chances of that? The photo looks like a mug shot of a dead body that just washed up on a beach. And my mom’s husbands name (my dad) was printed as jestis M S. it’s funny because my dad’s name is Justine M J, at least that’s what my mom wrote on the application. I still am in amazement on how a person can confuse J with S. (written in capital letters)
But that was nothing compared to the utter speechlessness our family was in when my dad got his voter’s card. The name read -jeswin . Em . Je .(“seriously, People can get initials wrong” might be your question. The answer is a big YES!) But the best part was spelling mistake (highest form of an understatement calling it a spelling mistake) on the wife’s name (first of all there was no wife’s name only father/mother/husband’s name so I pity all the married guys who got a voter’s card back then) my mom’s name appeared as –“jan Em. Vi.” But an optimist would have said “look on the bright side at least his photo look a little bit like him” but im not so sure! So thus the “non”identity card was to be tolerated and thus for a few months in Andhra my parents were jeswin Em Je and jan Em Vi, thanks to the election commission of India of course.