Midday Musings

In the US for the first time, I faced a difficulty from an unexpected quarter. Water taps. I’ve lived all my life in a city more than three hundred years old where taps work in a single uniform way -- clockwise to turn them on and anticlockwise to shut them off.(Well, it used to be this way when I grew up and left the country.)

In the restroom of the airport what I saw was a very fancy looking thing in the name of a tap, I could by no means find out its head which I could turn. I just stood at the wash basin staring at the curvy shining metal object in front of me, trying to figure out a way to make it flow for me. When staring didn’t help I decided it was time for action. I pushed and pulled and tapped but nothing happened. In desperation I poked at the mouth of the tap. And voila! Water gushed out of the tap onto my wrists wetting the sleeves of my sweater. I moved my hand away instantly. The flow stopped within seconds. Tentatively I moved my hands underneath the tap again. Water started flowing. These things need to come with instructions, I thought.

Now that the water’s flowing I merrily started washing my hands, taking my own sweet time -- completely forgetting that this is not holy water from the Ganges washing away my sins -- when all of a sudden the tap runs dry. My hands had moved away a bit. That’s what happens in the US when you are not paying attention to business on hand, even if you are only washing your hands. I moved my hands again, washed my hands as quickly as possible and proceeded.

Hands all clean, and all refreshed I now needed to drink water. One look at the water fountain and my thirst vanished. Am I supposed to drink from here? How do people manage to drink from that thing? Don’t they use glasses here? My only other option to quench my thirst was to buy bottled water which I was not willing to do for various reasons. Firstly, I don’t trust the bottling companies. I am very much convinced that they are selling tap water in the name of mineral water. Secondly, the conversion of dollars to rupees was quite shocking. So I just stood at a distance and watched people. The restroom episode was behind closed walls. But this was an open space. I didn’t want to provide free entertainment to hundreds of people out there. All they did was press the big button at the base, water came out and they drank. Looked simple enough.

As the coast cleared up I marched ahead confidently, took my position and pressed the button at the base. Water did come up sure enough, but instead of filling my mouth it spluttered in my face. Taken aback I glanced sideways to find out if anybody had noticed what was going on. As luck would have it I saw two kids smiling mischievously at me. Ears burning and my face as red as an apple, I walked away stoically. As the days passed I learnt to drink from the water fountain, though not without a bit of choking and getting my dress wet.

My ordeal was not over at taps and water fountains. Once I stepped into the country I realized I had to deal with Fahrenheits and Miles and Pounds and Gallons. I could leave behind kilometer and litre and make do with the mile and gallon, but the Celsius I couldn’t forget -- the chilliness of 5°C couldn’t be brought out by 41°F and the frequent conversions from Fahrenheit to Celsius have left my brains racked..