More on my trip to Chennai, my friend and I decided to patronize the waiting room at the Chennai central railway station. Quite a unique experience. We got there at about 5 AM and the place was already full and humming. Not surprising as entry to the waiting room wasn't restricted to ticket-holders as it was supposed to be. In any case, we finished brushing our teeth and got ready to have a bath. The bathrooms are attached to the waiting room and seemed to be one of 2 places in the entire station (which gets probably tens of thousands of visitors each day) where you can have a bath.
As I got into the line and waited for my turn, I got a sneak preview of the bucket (no luxuries such as a shower or anything other than a tap here). It was an old trash-can, one of those foot-pedal operated things which had sometime in its unfortunate life lost its cover. A bad start wouldn't you say, but it gets worse. The bathroom had two more things going for it - no water mug.. fill up the ex-trashcan and pour all the water on your head - a bath in its most elemental and best of all no lock/latch on the door. That's when I lost my nerve.
I quickly decided that I couldn't handle bumming it any more and decided to look for a cheap hotel somewhere close by where I could hire a room for a few hours to take a bath, change and get going. Its kind of strange how you cant handle slumming it any more. I could do these things when I was doing my MSc in Baroda. Hell, this bathroom reminded me of the common bathrooms we had there. But all these years later (5), I couldn't get myself to go back there...
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