Essays on Life – I: Thinking about people while taking a shower.

I think of you often and sometimes in the shower too. Bathrooms are perhaps the last remaining corners in our overcrowded yet lonely life which have not been totally invaded. A place where one can truly be alone with one’s thoughts – lascivious or otherwise.

Yogis stressed on physical activity to help quiet the mind allowing it to zone-in so that thoughts, ideas could be sharpened. Daily ablutions may also be playing a similar role where muscle memory takes over while the mind can focus on different topics, questions, and people (kinky or otherwise).

In that sense, bathrooms are (not-so-super)man’s fortress of solitude. As a place for expurgation and lustration, and for reflection, rejuvenation (exactly what Jor-el designed).

Come to think about it, bathrooms are the only place which are silent intimate witnesses of our lives. Moments of despair; moments of ecstasy; moments of anger; moments of love & hate; moments of profound thoughts; moments of excruciating pain; moments of embarrassment; moments of unbridled joy; moments of companionship (just like Kal-el invited Lois Lane); and lastly moments of profound clarity have all happened more in confines of washrooms than any other room of the house. But due to our preconceived biases we tend to associate it with awkwardness, negativity, and often sexuality.

In fact, in the age of constant information overload, bathrooms shield (albeit temporarily) from external stimuli letting the internal feeble voice speak up. In a time, where “people on soapboxes performing for each other” and one is forever trapped in the panopticon to perform to the approval of others, the washroom is the place where one can be oneself, being the most naked, being the most vulnerable, being the most cognizant of a life slowing ebbing away and leaving behind wrinkled skin on tattoos of the youth. Tattoos that once stood for love, purpose, and ideals all of which have withered in the harsh midday sun of adult life like a stream in the desert.

The bathroom is like that haven where one is always welcome (irrespective of deeds or wrinkles), no questions asked, and no judgements delivered. Acting as a compassionate mute spectator of one’s immensely long and eventually futile life and a receptacle for whatever we offer that nonchalantly flows down the drain of existence.  No wonder then, that every faith holds in such high reverence, the first bath of a new-born, and the last of the dead.

Hence, thinking about people while in the shower is mark of respect as one is inviting them into a scared space where one is most vulnerable and exposed. In fact, a good litmus test of our social circles and relationships should be to identify those whom we would think about while showering because they are the ones who are truly closest to us or attract us the most. The exercise would be discomforting too because many of whom we fool ourselves into believing to be close or loved, will probably not figure in that list.

Allowing people into our sacred spaces bonds them to us beyond the physicality of our bodies and then it removes the barriers in our mind thus enabling the unprohibited and prolific exchange of ideas, feelings, fears, and eventually affection.