The Urinary Track

For a while, this post has been on the agenda. But today, I cannot procrastinate it any further. Like most urinary matters, there is a sense of urgency here. So what exactly got a lazy bum like me to start dumping my brain contents with urgency?

This:

A Shower for the Hobbits?

What is this? A shower for Hobbits? Of course not, although it might work well as one. It is — you guessed it (you did, didn’t you? especially after the title of the blog?) — a urinal. For a moment I froze when I looked at this. And then I asked a friend who was with me: “Why?”

Yes, philosophical questions rear their ugly heads in practically any context. But here, especially, I think it’s a relevant question. I mean, really, WHY the f$%#! Are those standard, typical, urinals that expensive, that at frigging expensive places like hotels and multiplexes, they have to do cost cutting?

Of course not.

Like I said this post was long due. The previous context was the apparent inverse proportion between how pricey a place is, and the length/height of the wall separating two urinals in a restroom. For instance, a typical restroom for men in posh hotels/multiplexes looks like this:

Get rid of walls and partitions! 

It’s like John Lennon’s dream come true.

“Imagine there’s no walls,
No partitions too,
Imagine all the people, peeing in harmony …”

Yes, break down all the walls and partitions. And what a better place to start than restrooms!

In Metro BIG Cinema, or the multiplexed version of the original Metro Cinema in south Mumbai, where tickets are 300 and above, we have something similar to this in the restroom:

Look at the screen, not, um, elsewhere

Okay from what I remember there is a small excuse of a board between the two urinals, but their purpose is to demarcate the area for individual, I guess, because they serve no other purpose (unless again, it’s designed with Hobbits in mind). Here is how the logic goes.

“We’ve given you a digital scree to stare at, so no one should look anywhere else”

Pray tell me: anyone who can afford those digital screens, one per urinal, why can’t they afford a proper partition? Surely affordability is not the issue.

So that gets us back to the point before: why are the rest rooms in more expensive/plush places less privacy oriented? Do people from higher classes of society belong to some sort of not-so-secret society, where this is an initiation routine — feeling comfortable to pee (almost) in the open? Or is this some sort of social justice, where like those poor people who are forced to pee out in the open, through necessity; more well to do people are forced to pee, (virtually) out in the open?

I for one have no answers. Let the theories flow.