Making full use of the bath tub

I have been alive for 31 years now but have never lived in a house with a bath tub. The closest I have come was when we had a 300 liter overhead tank over a concrete slab in our kitchen. I think that was way back in 1985, when I was ten years old.

I remember once taking bath in that tank. I bruised myself while getting in and out of the tank because the kitchen roof was only one feet above the tank. Had it not been for the foamy Hamam soap I had used, I wouldn`t have got caught. My mother blamed the Central Water Department (CWD) for distributing muddy water till she saw the copper tap frothing at its mouth. The Hamam Soap which I had left on top of the tank acted as the evidence. The rest of my family being Vinod Khanna fans used only Cinthol.

Let us keep this between us, but I would blame my bath tub fixation on Hema Malini. You have all known Hema Malini as Dharamendra`s dream girl. But what the World doesn`t know is that …she is my dream girl too.

I first saw a bath tub in the Lux International advertisement on Doordarshan, where my beaming, soaked-up dream girl said she always used Lux soap for her complexion. If I am not wrong, my immediate wish on seeing the advertisement was to jump into the bath tub. Time and age have dimmed my memory, and perhaps that is why I am not sure if I wanted to jump into an empty bath tub or one with a soaked-up Hema Malini inside it.

Over the years the heroines in the advertisements changed, but my fixation didn`t. At least not till I spotted ShahRukh Khan in a bath tub, endorsing Lux International.

Back to the Present –

When I landed in Hyderabad ten days ago, my first worry was – will my hotel room have a bath tub? I could have been saved all the tense moments if my company`s intranet had a provision which allowed me to book only rooms with bathtubs. But alas, these corporate don`t understand the needs of an average reservation-seeking Indian male.

Even when the bell boy dropped my luggage in my room and waited for the tip (which I never gave), I was wondering if the room had a bath tub. The moment the boy left ruing his bad luck, I opened the bathroom door and to my excitement found a pure white, sparkling bath tub waiting for me.

It was 8.00 a.m. and I had to be in office for a 9.30 a.m. meeting but then, don`t they say that in the world of bath tubs…meetings can wait.