KOCHI: Throughout much of my childhood, I hated the idea of taking a bath. I would be pulled by my ear in the middle of street- cricket matches to take a bath. Or my parents wouldn’t serve me breakfast till I took a shower. But as an adult, I am constantly looking for excuses to take a shower. Perhaps life itself is a journey from hating baths to cherishing them.
For a child, a bath is an interruption from games, television and video games. For an adult, a shower is an oasis from the chaos of the world. Fifteen minutes of meditative silence where the body is busy, but the mind is blank. I have come up with many stand-up sets and column ideas while taking a shower. If you think about it, we live in the best times to take a shower. We have hot water with the press of a button. We have speakers that can be used in the shower if you like listening to songs. Our ancestors didn’t have it so easy. Back in the day, one assumes a bath could mean being ambushed by wild animals, or slipping into a lake. If soaps were made back in the day, they would be named ‘Life, boy!’.
And yet, the question remains to be asked. Have we reached the pinnacle of bathing technology? I would like to humbly differ. As a stand-up comedian, I travel to a number of cities. Apart from the tourist sights, the common thread to all the hotels is the complicated shower system. To a layman, it might seem like nitpicking. But if you’re among the few enlightened ones who has unlocked the meditative qualities of a bath, you’d be in a better place to understand my predicament.
For starters, one needs to hit the exact temperature of hot water. Like there are many paths to salvation, there are different temperatures of hot water, each unique to the user. Yet, like The Buddha, we all choose the middle path – one with a healthy mix of hot and cold water. If the water is too cold, you feel like an Eskimo streaker in Alaska. And if it’s too hot, you feel like you’re paying for the sins of your forefathers in hell.