Archive for September 9th, 2007

Mixing Cultures and Toilet-paper Catastrophe

September 9, 2007

I don’t want to leave even the least important matters related to our daily life. It is rare of the rarest that someone write toilet related articles in their blogs or some creative works.

We are not one among many but a different and special one. Today’s tigersamachar is dedicated to our great bathroom singers like Venket Subramanian, Chicken Haris and Anto Pradeep. I hope all of you agree that it is one of the most important matter in everyday life of all kinds of people in the world.

Let’s go to India House, Paris again, there you can see a notice in the fourth floor insisting us to keep the toilets clean. I will quote a sentence from there.

……It is very boring to see the traces of feces in the toilet……

From this, what we can infer is, it was very interesting for them to see it before and now, and gradually they get bored of it!!! This is the first time in my life I hear about people who are interested in seeing such things. Let’s hope this post will open their eyes to think about correcting it.

Now, I would like to mention my experience related to toilets that happened in India house at Cité Universitaire, Paris. As they mentioned in the web site of India House, they are trying their best to make you feel like India in the heart of Paris, along with following European culture. Yes you’ll feel a mixed culture there.

The best example is the toilets in India house. As it is in Europe they are not providing water in toilets and at the same time, to feel like in India they are trying not to provide enough toilet papers too. This is one of the worst case of mixing two different cultures.

Let’s return to the story. I woke up at seven in the morning. I searched for toilet paper in our (Raghavan’s) room, there is not even an empty role of toilet paper. The lady who is in charge of cleaning the room, did not provide the tissue paper last day because she doesn’t like him. This is her custom, If she doesn’t like someone she stops giving toilet papers for them.

She is trying to kill those people by this simple trick. I will explain it here for the sake of silent killers who read tigersamachar. If you do not provide toilet papers or water for the residents, they will try to manage without going to toilets and finally they die of severe damage to the digestive system.

Actually Raghavan has no problem with her and she is considering him as an enemy because of some misunderstanding, that he is not talking to her, the truth is very simple, he cannot understand French and that’s why. But the poor lady doesn’t know this.

I tried all neighbors, but all are in deep sleep, I thought it is not fair to wake someone up and ask for toilet paper. So I went to the toilets of 5th and 6th floor to serach for toilet papers and got a little but that’s not enough for me.

I took it with me and to get some more I went down to 3rd floor. But the case is the same as in 4th floor. While I am coming out after the search in the toilets of third floor with the one I already got from 6th floor, another guy came and asked me “excuse me, can you please give me that tissue paper…”, just like borrowing money from a beggar.

Even though the matters discussed here are not great, technically this post has an international importance. I started writing this post at CDG Airport, Paris, wrote the rest in Zurich, Switzerland while waiting for the connection flight to Germany and now publishing from Hannover. Yes tiger is currently in Hannover for an official visit.
(Posted on 9 September 2007)