There are some tragedies in life that a man is never ready for – being called an uncle, loss of hair, getting fired, loss of respect in front of his kids, and the moment when he enters the washroom without his mobile.
When he enters the restroom, closes the door, pulls his pants down or pulls up his lungi, as the case may be, sits down, and realises that he has forgotten his mobile phone outside…time stops.
At that exact moment, a honeybee somewhere is hovering over a flower, wondering, “What am I doing over this marigold?”
A driver navigating the 70th hairpin bend of Kolli Hills Road, one of the most dangerous roads in India, is thinking, “Why don’t I just let go of the steering wheel? What’s the point of this life?”
Somewhere in the Himalayas, one meditating sadhu opens his eyes and says, “A new man will be born today.”
Last week, I was that man.
I don’t know how I made that mistake. Usually, before entering the restroom, I check three things – is someone already there, has it already been flushed, and do I have my mobile in my hand?
But that day, I don’t know what happened. Maybe something my wife had said was on my mind, or maybe I was distracted because I saw my ex-girlfriend’s latest reel on Instagram.
Once inside the washroom, I am as fast as the superhero Flash. That’s why, by the time I realised that I had left the mobile outside, it was too late.
A man can reverse many decisions in life – he can go back to the same company, he can go back to the same woman, but once he has sat down inside the restroom, there is no going back.
For the first few seconds, I panicked. I started shivering and sweating. Then I looked at the light coming from under the washroom door to see if I could see the shadow of my mobile.
What if it had tried to follow me inside the washroom like a loyal dog? That’s when I realised that I was the only loyal dog in that relationship – my mobile didn’t love me back.
I thought of calling Rekha, but then I remembered that calling someone requires a phone and almost gave up. And then, it dawned on me…we were in the same house, so I could just shout, “Rekha!”
But then I remembered that I was a Rajan…and we Rajans have dignity.
A man can ask his wife for many things when he is in the washroom – a towel, a toothbrush, soap, shampoo, etc. But asking her to bring your mobile phone while you are sitting inside the restroom affects masculine pride.
Since, in my life, that’s the only thing I was left with, I didn’t call Rekha. Instead, I decided to suffer silently, all alone.
The first minute itself was difficult.
I said to myself, “You are a Rajan…we are built differently. You grew up in the 80s and 90s, when there were landline phones on which you couldn’t even see the number you were dialling.”
This self-motivation worked for exactly 18 seconds, after which I started missing my mobile again.
Then I told myself, “Come on, Rajan…you used to wait for a week for half an hour of Chitrahaar. You have survived day-long power cuts, half an hour of Doordarshan’s news daily, and you have even waited at bus stops for thousands of hours. You can survive five minutes without your phone.”
But that didn’t help either.
Only 39 seconds had passed since I had sat down. Now boredom entered…which I can assure you is a dangerous thing when you are inside a bathroom.
Walking inside the bathroom with your mobile in hand because you were bored outside is an acceptable practice. But what I was experiencing now was something new – being bored inside.
And that’s when I started noticing things.
After spending 14 years in Gurgaon, we had come back to Chennai in 2021, which means I had been using this washroom for almost five years. But for the first time in many years, I looked around properly.
We had a big washbasin, an even bigger mirror on one side of the pot, and a shower cubicle on the other side.
I noticed that inside the shower cubicle, Rekha and Rhea had enough products to run a small spa in Chennai. My side had one soap, which I shared with Ritwik.
By the time I was bored of looking inside the shower cubicle, it had been 84 seconds since I sat on the pot.
I think that’s when I started thinking about life, which, for some reason, I had stopped doing in recent times. Till now, I had been filling all my free time with tweets on Twitter, reels on Instagram and discussions on Reddit.
I realised this is the real danger of not having a phone – your mind becomes free, and you start thinking.
Suddenly, I started thinking: Am I a good husband? Am I a good father? Have I saved enough for our retirement? Do I call my family members often? When did I stop reading books?
Just when I started hating myself for not asking these questions often enough, I heard my phone ring outside.
I froze…and when you are sitting on the pot, freezing is not a good idea.
Who was calling me at my most vulnerable moment – when I wasn’t in a position to pick up the call? Was it important or was it spam? Was it the Amazon delivery guy? Would he go back if I didn’t pick up? Or was it a bank alerting me about a possible deduction for an EMI?
Whenever I am worried, I don’t know how Rekha knows. Because at that very moment, I heard Rekha’s voice from outside.
“Rajan, your phone is ringing,” she shouted.
I shouted back, “I know…I can hear.”
“Why are you not picking it up?” she followed up.
Now, there are moments in marriage when the husband has to decide whether he wants his wife to help him, or whether he wants to preserve his dignity. I decided to not to seek her help.
I said, “Phone is outside.”
There was silence. It was the kind of silence which tells you that your wife has already judged you and is now waiting for God to give her a sign that even they have seen her husband’s stupidity.
Then my wife broke the silence. “You went in without your phone?”
The way she said it, it sounded like I had gone to climb Mt Everest without oxygen. This was an excellent example of how wives make a mountain out of their husband’s molehill.
I shouted back, “By mistake.”
The way she asked, “Should I bring it?” told me that she had lost patience.
I said, “No, no. I am fine.” And started focusing on the mission at hand.
By now, I had been inside for about 135 seconds, but it felt as if I had been inside for more than 45 minutes.
In these 135 seconds, I had seen all the bottles inside the shower panel, counted the tiles on the floor, decided to replace the bathroom bucket, and discovered one cobweb in the corner.
I did make a mental note to inform Rekha about the cobweb, but then realised that if I told her, she would ask me why I did not clean it. So I decided against it.
Finally, I completed the mission for which I had gone inside the washroom and came out.
The moment there was no door between my mobile and me, I felt closer to it.
I found it lying innocently on the sofa, picked it up, and checked the missed calls – it was a spam call. There was one WhatsApp forward in my college group and one notification from Zepto asking if I wanted to order ice again.
That’s when I realised…this was the emergency for which I had suffered like a freedom fighter inside the washroom.
I felt ashamed. I had thought I was Rekha’s slave…but no, ma’am…it turns out I am my mobile’s slave. Of course, I am Rekha’s slave as well. I had to add this, just in case she ends up reading this.
But that one phone-less trip to the restroom taught me something important – we are all afraid of the silence inside our own heads.
When we aren’t reading a tweet, watching a reel or reading a news item, our mind starts asking questions. And most of us aren’t ready for that level of interrogation.
I miss that Rajan who could wait for more than an hour at the bus stop for a less-crowded bus, without having a device in his hands. That Rajan was more fun because he could look at people, surroundings and events around him to entertain himself…and then make stories out of them.