It is a truth universally acknowledged that an Ashoka student prowling the hallowed RH corridors at 7PM, clad in a bathrobe and clutching an industrial-sized bottle of shower gel, must be in want of a shower stall. Preferably one that does not make them want to launch themselves directly into the sun.
That’s it. That’s literally all anyone is asking for. So doable, yet somehow perhaps the third-most coveted thing on campus. (The second is 6PM shuttle seats from Jahangirpuri. The first is egg rolls.)
You, despite your constant attempts to set yourself apart from the general population in every respect imaginable, must also number yourself among these poor souls. Every day you call your mother and she asks you if you have showered and you dutifully reply yes, yes I have. But you cannot remember the last time you truly felt clean.
It goes something like this:
You set out fearlessly from your room, braving the long and arduous trek all the way to the end of the hallway. It is dangerous; thorns slice your skin to ribbons and winds buffet you from all sides as you frantically hold your bathrobe down. You do not know where the wind is coming from. Or the thorns, for that matter. But, you think, if you can just make it to the shower stall and lock the door behind you, you will be safe. Safe from the Horrors. But then—
You realise you have forgotten your bucket, and go back to your room to retrieve it.
You realise you have forgotten your towel, and go back to your room to retrieve it.
You realise you have forgotten your shower slippers, and go back to your room to retrieve them.
You set out fearlessly from your room, braving the long and arduous trek all the way to the end of the hallway. Your shower caddy, creaking under the weight of your seven bottles of product and all your hopes and expectations for one stress-free shower, falls open. Everything is on the floor.
“Man, I love it when things are on the floor,” you proclaim loudly to your hapless floormate, who is just trying to mind their own business and make some Maggi in the pantry.
“It’s inconceivable that a caddy I ordered for 150 rupees from a shady Amazon seller would fail me so,” you continue, throwing up your hand with a theatrical sigh. Your floormate, who is clearly the last living embodiment of everything good and kind and true in this world, merely blinks at you. “But no matter. I will shower today if it kills me.”
Little do you know that it just might.
You enter the bathroom. The floor is not unduly wet. So far, so good. You approach the third shower stall—your favourite, based on an arbitrary decision you made during O-week and then stuck with because you are nothing if not committed—and hesitantly push the door with your hand.
It gives way. The stall is empty. Rejoice!
You throw the door open to step in, and it is only then that you realise why the stall is empty.
You hear a strange noise: a sort of gulping sound mixed with incoherent whimpers, punctuated with gasps of fear that evoke a sense of pure unadulterated dread unlike anything you have ever felt before.
A few seconds pass. You realise that the sound is in fact coming from within you.
Then, as your brain catches up to your eyes, you realise that the sound is a reaction to the shower drain. Specifically, what’s in it—hair.
So much hair that you cannot even see the drain, even though you know it is there. Surely there is nothing in the past and nothing in the future and certainly nothing in the present except hair, hair, all the way down.
You decide to exhibit the flexibility that befits your liberal arts education and choose a different stall just for the day. A quick scan, however, dashes your hopes, because every single stall is just as bad. There is no escape.
Wait, there is one way out, but it involves doing the unthinkable. The unimaginable. The unbearable. You know what this will cost you. You know the consequences. Yet what are you if not a pioneer who dares to think, to imagine, to bear?
You grab a wad of tissue paper from the opposite stall and run in, guns blazing—which is to say mouth covered and breath held—and approach the drain, carefully scooping up the hair and flinging it into the nearest dustbin, retching violently all the while. In your entire academic career, this is the closest you have ever come to seriously transferring to Jindal.
Yet, miraculously, you survive. One might even say you thrived, despite the volley of adversities life flung at you. You’re now ready for a long, luxurious shower to wash away the exhaustion of the day and provide you with some much-needed rejuvenation. Like a Bollywood heroine in a rain sequence, you stand under the water and tilt your face up to the spray, throwing your head back in relief.
The water is cold.
There is no god in this world. There is no heaven after earth and no hell either, because earth is hell. There is no justice, no hope, no peace; only endless suffering. The fact that the person in the stall next to yours is having a great time blasting Frank Ocean does little to alleviate your misery.
And yet, you remain in your stall for a long time. You’d think the best way to take a shower would be to run in and run out as quickly as possible, and perhaps it is. But now that you’re here, you find yourself not wanting to leave—if only because it provides you a brief respite from the commotion of it all. A bubble within a bubble, a haven in a world that hurtles along at dizzying speeds whether its inhabitants like it or not. Maybe you like it here, where it’s quiet. Maybe you could even grow to love it.
And maybe you just find some perverse satisfaction in occupying the stall as long as you can to inconvenience your fellow residents to the greatest extent possible. But that’s neither hair nor there.
this was such a fun read