The tub

I am a huge fan of bath tubs. Being a very very lazy person, I hate bathing. It’s very hard for me to get up from my comfortable bed, go to the bathroom, open the shower and gasp loudly as the first drops of water trickle down the spine, then rub your hands all over the body (I categorize this act as rigorous exercise), apply soap and wash again (exercise again). This is during summers. Don’t get me started on winters.

A bath tub skips all this exercise. There is something very pleasant about lying down in the tub neck deep and let the water and bath gel do its work. And of course, I love the foam.

I have been alive for thirty-one years now. And up until three years ago, I have never lived in a house with a bath tub. Three years ago, Dad renovated the house when I was getting married and built two completely new bathrooms, one with a bath tub. I was ecstatic. I have never bathed in that tub till now. But I plan to.

Once, I mentioned my love for these little cubicles of pleasure (bath tubs, not the cubicles of cyber cafe) with some friends. The ladies didn’t like it.

Lady friend: “Guys have a one track mind. All you want from a bath tub is having sex in it.”

Me: “Of course I want to have sex in it. Who doesn’t?”

Lady friend: “Next thing you’ll be telling us is you want a woman in that tub. Like she’s just a commodity for you. All you guys think of women as sex objects.”

Me: “I don’t think women as sex objects. They are human beings…who object to sex.”

Lady friend: Middle finger.

I guess this love for bath tubs started when I was very young. Back in the Doordarshan days, they showed an advertisement of Lux soap with Zeenat Amaan in a bath tub. My first reaction was to jump into that tub. I don’t remember if I wanted to jump into an empty one or the one with a wet Zeenat Amaan in it. I ordered Mom to buy only Lux soaps for me.

In summer vacations, we always went to my mamaji’s place in Kanpur. It’s a huge property with the house, gardens, and even small farms inside it. There was (and still is) a well with a haudiya (rectangular, cemented, open water tanks) close to the farms. All the children used to bath in it every other day because usage of soap was prohibited in it because the water went to the farms. So one day we bathed in the bathroom (which I hated) with soaps and the other day we went to the haudiya.

One day, I brought the soap there because I didn’t want to bath the next day in the bathroom. After everybody went away, I took out the soap and washed myself. I went to the house a happy man, but I forgot the soap there. Next day, there was an enquiry commission to determine who the culprit was. The abandoned Lux acted as evidence. Rest of the family, being Vinod Khanna’s fans, used Cinthols.