Washroom Creativity

We live in simplified times. You can pose as a scarecrow in a remote village and know what Joe Biden ate for breakfast. You may lounge on a beach recliner and demand CEOs in the U.S. to pay you handsome dollars for your work. You may lay in bed in some corner of the world, and your mum can still yell at you for sleeping in late.

Everything is simple, except –

Getting into washrooms that aren’t your own. 

Of all the canvases this blue planet has offered us, the modern-day designers chose the gender name plates outside the washrooms to express their creativity. I have been to bland hotels with no themes, that tell no story, and serve just as bland food. But their washrooms have the most unique, confusing, and artistic way of telling where a man should relieve himself and where a woman should. 

Most washrooms have two divisions: one for men, and one for women. As simple as that. But when my bladder is flashing an emergency signal, those two divisions are where I have to use my brain more cautiously. Most times, I place a simple order–  “I’ll have what the next table is eating” just so that I can conserve my brain power.  I then use it  for decoding the gender riddle in bladder emergencies when I need an uninterrupted, safe, and fast pathway to the ladies’ room.  

Let’s just say, after a tough brainstorming session deciding the menu,  a girl walks mindlessly to the washroom. She misreads the signage and enters the wrong one. Do you realize what a hazard it would be? What she’d be subjected to see even for a split second, will haunt her for a lifetime. 

On the contrary, if a man mistakenly walks into a women’s washroom, he’ll just get to see women brushing their hair, adjusting their clothes, and touching up their face colours. Only if he lingers, he might get thrown out or beaten up. But that’s all the worst that could happen to him.

When long queues line up outside washrooms, it’s safe. You only have to follow the right herd. But what awaits you once inside these overused washrooms could make you lose your appetite for a month and possibly, your will to live anymore. Even your breathwork practice won’t help in this case. 

I can’t deduce which is the worst challenge– to perform in an overworked toilet or to decode the right gender plate.

Why can’t they simply label the respective rooms as ‘men’s and ‘women’s? Why write ‘king’ and ‘queen’, when washroom is a kingdom no king or queen would want to rule over? Or  ‘Men to the left because women are always right’- Why accept this truth while on your way to dump your waste?

 In most places, they use human stick figures that denote that the only difference between a man and a woman is that the later sports two braids on the head. These signages are generally made to glow in the light. But sometimes, the LEDs on the gender-separating phenomenon- the braids, stop working and there lies a hazard waiting to happen.

I can board trains running with 2 bags; I can eat spicy lunch and bland dinner, and digest it all with a smile; I can sleep in a tent that’s breaking its spine because of snow, but getting into a washroom? Never easy. 

Once I reach the washroom, I stop. I take a few breaths to calm down the overwhelm of having waited until the very last moment to pee. Then I think hard- what creativity have they poured into the room labels? Is it a symbol or a smart word? I ask multiple-choice questions to myself, like the ones in the scholarship exams and then deduce the right answer.  I still don’t walk in confidently.

 I ensure that a woman walks inside the washroom that I think is meant for me. The person entering should not be the cleaner staff. I have seen enough male cleaners walk inside ladies’ washrooms to talk to the lady cleaners.

Talk about privilege, people. 

Even after my stringent efforts,  I have had embarrassing moments. There’s one from when my hair was in a boy-cut and I was travelling solo. I had a few hours to kill before my evening train, so I decided to wait at a McDonald’s in Delhi. I walked into a deserted ladies’ room. A male cleaner peeped in, and said, ‘This is the women’s washroom’. I turned on my heels to face him. He took one quick top-to-bottom look at me. Stalling his gaze at my breasts for longer than necessary, he instantly knew he made a mistake.

He disappeared before I blinked. I was embarrassed and angry. But as I ran my fingers through the misleading length of my hair, I realized it was an honest mistake. 

Some washrooms don’t limit their creativity to sign boards; they take it further inside. While travelling to Himachal Pradesh, my bus halted for dinner somewhere near Kishanganj in Delhi. I wasn’t hungry so I decided to settle for a tea, after a precautionary washroom break. The tea stall was beautifully decorated with a line-up of colourful tea kettles with blinking  lights running over them.

I then walked into the washroom. In this Indian-style bathroom, the water buckets to use after your secret business, were the same beautifully designed, colourful tea kettles, only without the blinking lights running over them. 

I couldn’t drink tea for the next two weeks.

Creativity is good. It’s the spice of life. But does it have to show up in critical places like washrooms? What if hospitals decided to get creative this way? Like cardiology was renamed as the ‘blood-pumper’ department, ENT was called the ‘lost-your-senses?’ department, and gynaecology went like- the ‘we-know-what-you-did-once-upon-a-night’  department… ?? 

Well, you get my point. My hope for the world’s washrooms is that the designers disavow washroom signages as creativity canvases. Is that too much to ask? 

---