To Pee or not to Pee

I mostly have no problem with delayed flights, in fact I like them – it gives me more time with my book, and it’s indeed something to dissolve into another world, sitting under those big awnings and towering steel girders, whilst watching airplanes sashaying in the tarmac. It’s also equally nice to look up from the book, occasionally, and hear the many languages that we, as a land, and its peoples – speak.
“Coffee kaavalna? Flight late avthundhi”

These warm conversations between friends, family and even kids – I don’t mind. They’re paced well, they’re slower words, have a nice warm tone and tenor poised in anticipation of the impending journey. What I wouldn’t ever do – is place myself anywhere near a clad-in-suit tired corporate person, you can spot them from a mile away – ear phones – check ☑, laptop ☑, fingers clacking away – ☑, grave demeanor as if every moment accounts for an apocalypse- check ☑

In my shimmery silver skirt, I would saunter from one row to the next, scan faces, determine vocal cords proficiency – and pick the least likely disruptor to my literary escapade.
I am telling you – the ground staff love me! I m smiling away, chatting with them about the weather in Delhi being pretty awful, and I ask them which gate because I always mess up the gates, I say thank you, I crack lame jokes about how I try to pack light every single time but I don’t (they don’t care but they nod politely, some even smile intermittently)
They apologize.
I say – De Nada!

But what I DO NOT like – CATEGORICALLY do NOT like is how these flight delays interfere with my pee schedules. If you’re a woman, you’ve at least had a hundred instances of one woman declaring “I want to pee”, and the other asking -“Can you hold?”. This is then followed by a meticulous discussion on how long the potential-holder can hold, and whether that is prudent at all? Because how much holding can one possibly do anyway considering the erraticity of life and its myriad interruptions?
Before a flight or a train – you’ve made your accurate pee calculations. You know the exact amount of water to drink, you haven’t had an ounce extra. (One pound of flesh, Portia – not a drop of blood!). You can hold. Until you reach home and sit on your beautiful gleaming white commode, and congratulate yourself – for all that remarkable, and enviable fortitude.

Men, of course- do not understand this. They’ve never had urgent, crisis inducing pee conversations with their buddies, they’ve never had to ponder, and weigh the pros and cons. They’re the fully emancipated ones from the throes of The Pee Wars.

Women are endowed with this unfortunate skill in their DNA and they develop it, work on it, and hew it to perfection as they are growing up.

Me to Little T (who’s 9)- how was school booboo?
T – Maasi, move! I need to go pee. The school washroom was so dirty. I’ve held it for so long.

T and I – aren’t new to the travails of truant/uninvited/miscalculated pee arrivals. On a train from Mumbai to Surat, she looked up from her drawing and said, “Maasi, I really tried. I can’t hold it any longer and we must go”.
She was six,back then.
“Shittttt”.
“Maasi, that’s a bad word but I think we çan allow it this one time”.
This was my worst nightmare unfolding, smack in the middle of an irredeemable Surat-Mumbai Express. But steeling my nerves, staunchly reminding myself of my aunt duties, I launch into the doing mode. I put out the toilet paper all over the seat, so much so that I am dressing it up, I place her carefully, her stubby legs dangling, instruct her not to touch anything – ANYTHING, and definitely not the seat!!! Once the job is done I dowse her stubby hands with hand sanitizer, even dab some on her face because who knows, and sink into my seat after this gruelling, gruelling ordeal.

This year during New years, when the fabulous outdoor party came with its own ominous harbinger to the newness of the year, with dilapidated toilets and unkempt washbasins, I walked out in the new year glitter only to announce to a bunch of spectacularly clad women in equal shimmer and sequins, awaiting their turn to pee with- “Ladies! The flush isn’t working.”
With their crestfallen faces from a beer too many, they simply said, “it’s okay we’ll hold our noses”.
Little T meets me in the sparse corridor and announces grandly, like a proud student eager to announce to her teacher about not having forgotten her lessons – “Maasi, it was so dirty. But I didn’t touch anything, and I really wish you were around because you make it so nice. But this time, I knew EVEN you couldn’t save me because there was no toilet paper”.
“Oh and I didn’t sit fully, just squatted”, she adds.
“Good girl,” – I say. “And me too. Squatted.”
Women needed good knees at least for this – to squat over unsavoury toilet bowls.

Though sometimes, we prefer holding to squatting. And as Air India puts yet some more distance between me and their flight, I get ready to make yet another momentous decision of my life –

To Pee or not to Pee.

(P.s. The Airport look, of course)