Beer is not your friend!
Okay, so when is it acceptable to wear adult nappies? I could have used one today. I nearly suffered renal failure and a catastrophic loss of dignity.....nearly.
I had just eaten lunch at a swanky new cafe in downtown Bombay (Mumbai if you prefer). As we finished our food and a beer I wondered if I should just visit the toilet before our next meeting starts? You see, I don’t normally take a large beer at lunch but it was a hot day and my local colleague seemed keen to have one. As my colleague looked at his watch, he suggested we get moving and I asked how far was it to the next meeting?
"Not far, it’s in the same area". He replied.
It is all my fault, I blame myself, for not checking what "in the same area" actually meant. From experience I now know, much to my horror, that it means "on the same continent.”
Anyway, we set off in our car and, after half an hour, my bladder was already starting to stretch. Ten more minutes and my kidneys were aching like hell. All this was exacerbated by the pothole-ridden, speed bump infested, assault course they call Bombay's main roads. With my bottom lip firmly bitten and my knuckles clenched, I endured another twenty minutes of violent jolting and jarring. The agony of it was maddening. In addition, I had to close my eyes several times, not because of the pain, which was excruciating, but because I have blue eyes. Having blue eyes can mean the sudden onset of sneezing whenever exposed to bursts of bright sunlight. As the vehicle trundled along the road, we would alternate between shadow and blazing sunshine, as we passed by all the tall buildings. IF I had sneezed at this point, to put it mildly, the dam wouldn't have just burst, it would have exploded! Probably accompanied by screams of joy and the tears of shame, all at once. Luckily, my closed eyes prevented such a disaster.
However, with my eyes tightly shut my heart was sinking, for now I could hear our driver asking a pedestrian for directions. We were lost!! That was not what I needed to hear. Blood was coming from my lip now and I had lost all feeling in my fingers, as my grip on the armrest tightened yet further. I was about to pass out.
Eventually, we did arrive at the offices of our next meeting. You would think, by this stage, that I would have run to the toilet but no, I couldn’t, anything more than very small calculated steps would have triggered a leak. In fact, that may already have happened. Hard to be sure really, as the copious quantities of sweat dripping off me, from the heat and stress, was making it difficult to know for sure. To the people occupying the offices outside the toilet, where I finally found sanctuary and release, it must have sounded like a remake of Meg Ryan's famous scene in "When Harry met Sally". Oh how I cried out in ecstasy.
Indians have a great sense of humour and some clapped when I came out. I never did win any contracts from that meeting but at least I did not wet myself.............much.
