Shit-Storm: Stay calm...

My parents and I have lived in this apartment for 33 years. One of the bathrooms, the shared one sprung a leak on Wednesday. My mother pointed it out to me when I returned from work, a ballooning patch of plaster, drops tip-topping on the floor. It didn’t smell so we had some relief but knowing that it was dripping endlessly was concerning. I can count the number of visits the flat owners upstairs have made. The flat was once rented out but only for a couple of months, back in 2012 or so. We’ve never faced leakages, so it annoys me to no end. I ask my father to call the owners of the flat, who tend to spend the summers in the US, the rest in another part of town in Mumbai. The hope is that they’re visiting, or with good sense, have left the keys with someone in our society. After a brief conversation, he agrees to come check what’s wrong, but not before Sunday. He lives 30 minutes away, but he doesn’t care. Neither my father, nor I are compulsive in such matters. We choose to be patient.

There is a new leak on Friday, this time in the other bathroom. It’s separated by a corridor, attached to a second bedroom. This is strange. It doesn’t have the ballooning plaster, but there are drops hanging off the edge of a tiled beam. What could make two bathrooms spring leaks just days apart? I have a theory in mind but I’m hesitant in explaining it to the secretary. I tell my father about it, but he thinks it’s unlikely. The society’s secretary has decided to take things into his own hands. He has plumbers climb the outside of the building on Saturday and cut the water supply to that flat’s primary bathroom, the one that sprung the first leak. I stick my ear to the attached bathroom’s wall. I think I hear water falling into a pool. My father can’t. We assume that with the water pipe cut, the leaks should stop but half a day later, they don’t. My parents are now placing rags on the bathroom’s window edges, moving towels and toiletries out.

Sunday arrives, as does our Tamil neighbour. He’s probably 70 or a bit more, slightly cock-eyed with a head full of ripened hair. He’s in no hurry. He’s calm, palms up in the air, all-smiles all to my annoyance. I’m impatient, because I’m expecting my wife to land from Bangalore any moment, and I need to go back to help her carry her bags 4 floors up to our own apartment, minutes away from my parents. Our neighbour is interested in discussing other matters. Has the maintenance charge increased? Are there talks of redevelopment? What are your son’s qualifications? Where does he work? My son works in the US, my daughter too. We visit them every year. We go there for 6 months, then we return to our place in Chembur. I tell him, I didn’t study too well, I work for a decent company and I’m doing fine.

I’ve asked my mother to serve him snacks and tea, but he won’t have any. A staunch South Indian, strong with his Brahmin roots and heritage, he never eats or drinks in homes that consume alcohol or meat. Fair enough. The snacks lie there for about 45 minutes, as he expresses his no-tension attitude. He tells me coconut oil is the best and the scientists were wrong. He can’t help worrying about taking care of the 4 large houses. The one he stays in, at Chembur, the one upstairs, the large one in Sion, and the last in Pune. He’s retired, turning frail but he’s proud of his investments. One can tell he’s a miser and earned his skewed sense of reality and value. He tells my father, who’s older than him, that we should all relax in this age. My father is losing his patience now, and tired of making small-talk. I’m trying to bridge the awkward seconds of silence with head nods, and suggestions of going and checking his apartment. I can’t ignore the mental images of our stained bathroom ceilings, the dripping water, the damp rags.

I stand up, and ask him if we can quickly go upstairs, then come back and then we can chat. He senses my urgency, and we slowly climb the stairs leading to his apartment. He opens the ancient brass lock that’s never been replaced in 33 years. It’s greenish in colour, blocky and the kind you might find in an old village house. I distinctly remember seeing it a child as we ran up and down the stairs. It’s still there.

The door opens, and the stench of dampness and dust rushes out. I hold my breath for a few moments, but how long can one? The extended hall is empty, with scraps of paper and cardboard scattered, cobwebs on the grills. The windows are dusky and brown. There are no fans or furniture in sight. The decades-old mosaic tiles are a rare sight today; they’re stained by moisture and dust. I waste no time and I don’t remember looking at the living room. Wearing only slippers, I walk in. The large hall has a corridor to the right, leading into the large bedroom, with the shared bathroom on the left (the one that sprung the first leak), but before that lies the bedroom on the right that stands in between the second bathroom attached to it.

The doors to all the rooms are latched. The light from the living room exposes the corridor, a stained patch of tiling and as I walk on it, I discover it’s very wet. I struggle with the shared bathroom’s latch. It finally gives way but flooded with muddy water. There are no running taps, no broken pipes, no damaged drainage. The cut water pipes might have ended the flowing. The trail of water leads under the door of the other bedroom on the right. I open it, and the bathroom has a large layer of water, like a large dirty oil spill. The dirt and the water make it extremely slippery, not to mention it’s stinking. It’s the kind that corrupts your respiratory system for life. It’s the kind you’ll remember even in the middle of the night. I remember it as I write this. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

I’ve been tip-toeing to avoid getting my feet dirty. I’ve asked my neighbour to stand outside and he’s obeying orders now. I don’t want an old man slipping and breaking his spine. By now, I can hear the water splashing. It’s the same sound I heard downstairs when I stuck my ear to the bathroom wall. I open the bathroom door, only to feel an inch of warm water gush out the doorway, over my toes, touching my ankles. There’s two inches of muck on the bathroom floor, the showerhead is submerged in the filth and the falling water exposes the tiles below. The water isn’t flowing out the drain because of this filth, it’s flowing out into the attached bedroom, then the corridor into the other bathroom. This must be the work of the most-excellent architect. More like, this is just coincidence.

I’ve discovered the source of the stench. With the bathroom door open, I peep in and spot a broken window. There’s a pigeon sitting on the shower pipe in front of me, a second pigeon is fast asleep on the toiletries stand on the left and it’s coated with pigeon shit. It’s like someone shot a cannon load of pigeon shit into that corner. The pigeon shit is on the commode, on the flush tank and below it appears to be a dead pigeon, also covered in shit.

My theory was accurate, but not the cause. Water has flooded one from bathroom, through the house into the second. The pigeons got in through the broken window ages ago, they’ve sat and rotated the showerhead off its mounting, shat their lives onto the bathroom floor, shoved twigs into the drainage, then spun open the shower tap. I’m standing in shit, as I shut the shower tap looking at all three pigeons, in sheer terror. I don’t want to trigger panic and have them fly into me, into the house.

“How can pigeon open tap?”. The image of the pigeons blurs out to reveal my smiling Tam-Bram neighbour’s face. It’s uncanny, they look so similar. “How it can open tap?”, he blurts. He’s followed me, and he’s calm as always. I admit I was extremely patient, as he asked me to get him someone to clean his apartment. “I’ll pay”, he says next. We headed to the secretary to get him some help. We coordinate with the watchman. By night, the leaks have stopped and the house is clean by the following afternoon.