Bathroom Story Good Evening Everybody

No Poetry Today हटायो  Why  Because समथिंग bad हप्पेनेड to me really bad. I am in a situation of 127 hrs. You know the movie 127 hrs. I was in the same situation except for the Gora James Franco and his कटा हुआ हाथ  वैसे भी मेरे favorite तो शशि कपूर हैं

    About a month ago I moved into a new apartment in Watertown. . It is one bed room apartment. So as you all know I am lonely still looking for my prince charming Call me.–  . Before I moved into my apartment, I noticed that my bathroom door was made of  cheap  plywood which was cracked at several places. हज़ारों डॉलर  खर्चा  करो  तबभी  इतने घटिया घर मिलते  हैं
   Anyways, I asked the कंजूस  landlord to fix the door before I moved in. मैंने
  सोचा  ये   गोरा काम पे तो गच्चा नहीं मरेगा  he will fix it for me.
 

The day I move in…my daughter Shilpi helps me move in my luggage  consisting mostly of my unsold watercolor paintings and beautifully designed greeting cards – only for a dollar each – please  forgive me for my shameless plug. Moving on, as soon as Shilpi puts down all my luggage, she runs back home to write her non-existent novel.आजकल की लड़कियाँ भी ना ये नहीं की अपनी माँ की कुछ मदद कर दें   No, I’m joking. I love Shilpi…although she could get a job and make her family proud. 

Now, I’m all alone in a new apartment in a neighborhood where I don’t know anyone and now I need to use the bathroom. I go inside the bathroom and I shut the bathroom door and bolt it. . After I’m done with my business, I reached  for the door knob and it won’t move. I try again. And again. And again. And again till I realize that the कंजूस और झूठे landlord ने  instead of  replacing  the घटिया   door , he only painted over it to hide the cracksऔर अपनी जान छुडा ली   मेरी किस्मत फूटी ! I was locked in the bathroom.

Then I looked around and I realized I did not have my phone with me. Come on, who takes their phone to the bathroom? Unless you have somebody to swipe right on Tinder on the toilet seat, which then makes sense.   हाँ tinder  right  और  left मैं जानती हूँ ! So, now I have no phone with me and I’m all alone locked in the bathroom in my new apartment in a neighborhood where I don’t know anyone. अब क्या करूँ ! 

 ऊपर से , I very soon realized that the bathroom had no windows in it and the door was completely shut. So, now I was literally in a closed chamber and the oxygen was running out. अगले दिन खबर आती की एक इंडियन लड़की की लाश watertown के बाथरूम में पायी मिली     हाँ , I’m still 22 but I look like this thanks to climate change. In my optimism , I said to myself, I won’t die today not here, not now and not like this. . I will get out no matter what. 

So, I started screaming बचाओ .बचाओ  मैं यहाँ बाथरूम में बंद हो गई हूँ ! अरे कोई तो .बचाओ   2 minutes later, I realized I was not in Edison, New Jersey. So, I started screaming, “HELP ME! HELP ME! I’M LOCKED IN THE BATHROOM!” I banged on the door and yelled for a good fifteen minutes but nobody came to help me. 

I started to lose energy. I was tired. How long can a woman of my age scream for fifteen minutes? 

An hour had passed. I knew this was it. My life was done.  मेरे दिमाग में रणबीर सिंह का गाना बजने लगा  "  अपना  टाइम आएगा -अपना  टाइम आएगा  अरे अपना  टाइम आएगा  नहीं अपना  टाइम आ गया  Neena Aunty ka chapter close. Time to say goodbye to my poems  to टीवी  शो Gossip Girls Season Two, to Shilpi and to my dozens and dozens of unsold paintings and greeting cards.   Until, I saw a big stone in the toilet rack…

I picked up the big stone, looked at it for one second and threw it at the bottom half of the door. The door got a crack. Turns out because the landlord was  महा  कंन्जूस   , the quality of the bathroom door was made up of the cheapest material. I threw the stone again and again and again. Until there was a huge hole in the door.

So huge, in fact, that I crawled through it and made it to  the other side. I was finally free! Azaadi! I could finally breathe again. महा  कंजूस लैंडलॉर्ड की कन्जूसी ने ही आज मेरी जान बचाई  so to thank him I called 9-1-1 and got my landlord arrested on charges of misinformation to the tenant.

I’m just joking, he’s gora, he’ll never go to prison. So, instead, I just binge-watched the third season of Gossip Girls. Thank you! 

I want to thank Shuja for tellbrating this piece. He wrote my real life horror incident and turned it into a lovely comedy which you all enjoyed just now.  May be he will have another one on this collaboration. Please a round of applause for him .Thank you. 

   Change of heart

 I was born and raised in a joint Hindu family. I lived in a community of both Hindu and Muslims. My father had a few Muslim friends but my mother had none. She had witnessed the massacre that happened during the Partition of India in the year 1947. She still   carried those scares.

  I was only two at that time and had not started walking yet. I used to sit on the ledge of a big window on the third floor of our house, all day long. I enjoyed watching vendors coming to the lane and selling different things. Aloo lelo …pyaz leloo, tamatr leloo, ice cream ice cream vanilla, mango, orange,chocolate…...     The most fascinating thing  for me was the transaction. How do they know how much money to take for how much stuff. I noticed vendors using weights of  different sizes for different items. So magic lies in weights oh! I wish I could touch those shinning magical weights. But Alas! I could not walk.
    That day my cousin Sharda was distributing mangoes to the children of the house.  There were twenty four children in the house and so were the mangoes  one and only one mango for each child. When Sharda had given all mangoes  she was still left with one— she called every one, harshi, Sudha, Rakesh Ravi, Nina Nina Nina No answer  . And so I was discovered to be missing.
    Everyone started to panic and to look for me around the house.  
    In fact, that was the day I had decided to walk out. I wanted to touch the magical weights.   The desire of touching the weights was so strong that I did not realize how I climbed down two stairs and landed into the street. But there was no vendor to be seen . All I could see was a goat chasing a hen and the hen is running towards me. Oh! I tried to move few steps away from the approaching hen. I felt a pebble on the dirt road bore into the sole of my foot. Ouch! I am not wearing shoes and I am all alone on the street. I started crying.   Suddenly, I saw a man coming towards me. He was wearing a white kurta pajama and had a long beard. I looked up he does not look like my father. I got scared, he came closer and said, ‘ beti, don’t be scared. I am Maulviji,   I read  prayers in the mosque over there. He took me in his arms and took me to his house. His wife Shabana came out hearing my cry. As soon as she saw me, his wife took me into her lap and began to soothe me with her beautiful voice. I looked at her she looked like my mother so I stopped crying.  She wore  a white kameez and a green dupatta. With a spoon she fed me sevai, a sweet milky dessert that she must have cooked for the upcoming Eid festival.
    A little while later, Maulviji carried me back to the street from where he found me. There, I saw my father, who was frantically searching for me.  Maulviji asked me, “Beti do you know him?"
    "Yes," I said, running towards my father.
A smile spread across my father’s worry-stricken face. It seemed that he was so happy to see me walking that he forgot the whole business of my going missing and that the family was worried sick looking for me.

 .   When he walked into the house, my mother still angry asked my father, where did you found her?

My Father, “ on The street”

Alone?

No with Maulviji

That Maulvi

Yes That Maulvi and his wife Shabana took care of her when she was crying alone on the street

She was with Shabana

Yes”

That was the moment when my mother had a change of heart. She realized that no religion is above humanity. Love conquers all religion.

   (  Lesson Slowly, her outlook towards Muslims changed. The Maulviji's wife, Shabana and my mother became friends. Though she refrained from eating meat, my mother tasted the sweetness of their sevai, and the next Eid, she cooked them herself, sending a batch to Shabana Aunty in my hands. That day my mother discovered a new meaning of religion—love for her
fellow human beings.)

Written By Neena Wahi Tellabrated and edited by Jo Rander Performed on 15^th November2018 @ Central Square Branch Library

 Performed Again in December 2018 for Subdrift Boston @ 372 Harvard Street Cambridge.