Mero Charpi Explode Chha

My Nepali teacher visited on Wednesday, and, as is his custom, enquired how everything was. Lacking the liunguistic acumen to explain that I had a party the other night and invited 5 Europeans I had never met before, as many AYADs as can fit into my flat, an American and our Nepali friend Jaya, and that the first of them to use my toilet created a chaos only before seen when the aliens blew up the White House in Independence Day. I started to explain but after a few false starts, a couple of giggles and an illness fried barin I simply said "Mero charpi explode chha". Meaning "my toilet explode is".

It was bound to happen. I mean, obviously, we all knew, it was only a matter of time. I'm surprised he made it this far.to be honest. Perhaps over the course of my three months in country I have become familiar with his habits. I know that when he is flushed he likes to have the flush handle raised back into its regular position. He doesn't like exceedingly large downward pressure applied to the tank and when there is no water in the building tank to refill him, he knows that I am more than willing to use my precious hot water (filled from a seperate tank) to flush him.

Danielle however was not aware of this. She was not aware of the history. Of the pain. Of the three weeks I spent effectively toiletless last time he exploded. She does have a good ear for humour though, as she picked the best time to hatch her dastardly plot. Most people had arrived, and we were all sitting down to a few warm glasses of beer (which the Italian girls claimed to prefer over cold [which has to be a lie, why would anyone PREFER to drink warm beer?]). Danielle sat back down from her visit to my friend the temperamental toilet and I was in the kitchen doling out the warm Everest beer packed in bottles clearly printed with the word Tuborg (a different kind of beer). There was a horrible crashing sound like a ceramic sink smashing all over a ceramic tile floor.

Immediately I had images of what had happened - knowing how much the sink also dislikes downward pressure. Before you knew it, 5 or 6 people were crammed into my bathroom to witness the scene making it impossible for me to get in to see the damage. It was not the sink, as I had feared but poor Charpi. His tank had suicided off the wall, the filling hose had torn itself right off (a brand new one too) and water was shooting out at a flesh damaging rate*. Grabbing the hose I bought for fixing him last time that turned out to be the wrong size but I kept for a moment just like this I put Danielle in charge of holding that while I grabbed Jaya and ran to find Danesh while still having my wits enough about me to grab Jaya to help translate.

Turned out that Jaya had had a little too much rum to speak him own language intelligibly, Danesh managed to work out what was going on and shut off the tank but not before we lost a good 100 litres of water mainly depositing itself on Danielle and myself.

I decided to do the fixing 100% myself this time, not wanting to "bother" Danesh with it and I am happy to say that Charpi is back to 60% functional.**.

*not quite as strong as the Stupid Pressure Hose Incident of 2005
** He's actually only ever at 60%, so I take that as a good effort on my part

Toilet Language

Just a quick update to let you know what has been happening, and what is on that abstract to do list.

IMAGINARY THINGS TO DO LIST

• Get some lights for the damn bike - seriously! It's getting dangerous out there! See the next point.
• Find someone official enough and demand they do something about that open manhole on the main street in Lazimpat. Currently a green tree branch is sticking out of it, warning all and sundry not to drive into it. Of course, this is quite an acceptable solution, until such time as the branch dies, and then people won't know what to do.
• Work out how to convince my didi (literally, 'big sister' but actually the lady upstairs that does my washing) that the money I am waving around in my hand is actually for her, for services rendered over the last month. The broad just won't take it!
• Write a paper on the optimal intraocular lens power for North Korean cataract patients based on a minuscule dataset that may or may not be complete and accurate.
• work out how to work out what the optimal IOL power for North Korean cataract patients should be.
• Work out how to convince colleagues that I don't know actually know how to work it out. There must be some research, formula or method for deciding these things. Not some Australian guy with no experience pulling numbers from tea leaves (while apparently a widely accepted fortune telling technique, I'm not sure the scientific community is likely to accept it) - however i could document it in the Methodology section.
• Find a colleague that doesn't nod and smile as I ask the above questions. I want some head shaking, frowning and even some yelling just so i know I'm getting somewhere, even if it's wrong.
• Determine how to jump the locked fence after 9pm without waking up the entire compound.
• Sound proof my bedroom from the morning sounds of neighbour's sex, dishwashing at the communal well, taxi music, taxi drivers, taxi exhaust and taxi maintenance sounds (apparently I live above some kind of taxi gang hideout).

THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN DONE LIST

• Established the phonetic difference between four and six (being 'char' and 'chha'). To the point where I was actually able to request half a dozen bananas. Seriously, what the hell do I want with 4 bananas anyway?
• Followed a conversation with a local shop keeper.
  "namaste, tapaailaai kasto chha?" - "I greet the gods within you, to you how is it?"
  "namaste sir, Thik chha" - "i greet the gods within you sir, OK is"
  "chhawataa keraa dinus" - "six bananas give please"
  "oho! countrymaa aaun-something something" - i interpreted as "hey! what country have you come from?"
  "ma Australiamaa aaue: bhayo" - "I Australia at, came"
  "ma Australia something something something something something suhuji" - i interpreted as "I want to open a shop in Australia"
  "raamro chha" - "good is"
  "paache-teis rupiyaa: dinus" - "25 rupees give please"
  "la" - "there ya go"
  "pheri aaun:aulaa" - "again come!"
  Of course, at one point in there we broke into English to discuss the potential of his business and expected salary in Australia, which I craftily avoided, but I was pretty happy with my efforts.
• Sunil came back from India about 2 weeks ago, and came to check in. Technically he wasn't "in" India, or anywhere near it in fact, but was working on an infrastructure project somewhere translating for the Japanese. So, not India then. Apparently Danesh (Denis, I have now worked out his actual name) couldn't work out how to use the key in my lock after I showed him), it is tricky - I'll give him that. Sunil "fixed" the toilet, by buying a new hose and applying duct tape. Always a good solution when times get tough. Aside from some acceptable sprinkling when you flush, the toilet seems to function to a most satisfactory level.
• I determined that Danesh is not the son of, but in fact the husband of my didi "Rita". Who knew?
• Had a lesson from my neighbours son (Bin) on making dhaal baat. It wasn't a lesson so much as him cooking for me using every food item in the fridge and every pot and pan available.
• Worked out that Jingo is called by a different name depending on who speaks to him. Bin dislikes him so much that he just calls him dog (cucuur). Bin's mum calls him something else and his brother Prim (they like to keep it simple for me) calls him something else again. SO I'm gonna stick with Jingo.
• Wrote a program in VB with Raju, technically its not part of either of our job descriptions, but it is "capacity building" so I'm not feeling too bad about it. It adds 7 days to a date of your choice. Sure, it hasn't got the most practical of applications, but it worked, which is a big improvement on my stuff from uni.
• Felt like I have lost a significant amount of weight. Not so much because I feel thinner, but because my favourite shirts have doubled in size due the Rita's "technique". What used to be a chest hugging arm-strangling polo now reaches to my knees and would probably function better as a nightie or some kind of short towel.

Things That Go Bump in the Day, and Spray Water Everywhere

We don't really know what happened. Maybe we never will. I'll tell you the story all the same, whether it develops an ending or not. I hope it will. What would a whodunnit be if the whizz mastermind detective didn't reveal all at the end of the movie in a nicely summarised 20 minute monologue?

I'm no whizz mastermind detective, but I can spin a story. So, unless you have been living under a proverbial rock, you would know that I have been having toilet problems.

Carly asked me if the toilets flush here, and in general, yes they do. Thankfully however for the last 5 days only one of my taps has been working (one in the shower) and that means that the toilet has not been refilling. This is in fact a good thing, because for a while there, it was impossible to sit there without being ankle deep in toilet water. Somewhere my toilet developed a leak, and then in the course of me trying to determine the source of the leak another one appeared. Before I knew it anytime the thing had water in it it was like being back at wet 'n' wild.



I told Sunil, my landlord, about the problem. He said that Denis (I think that's his name, although it doesn't sound very Nepali) would come, check it out and fix it but that Sunil would be away in India for a while. Denis came, acknowledged that the toilet (charpi) was broken and we had a conversation. The gist of which was "toilet is broken", "yes","I will fix", "excellent", I think. Of course, he might have actually said "well, that's borked, good luck with it mate!". It's another thing I think we'll never know, because I was speaking English and him Nepali.

Anyway its been a week and a half since said conversation and Denis may as well have left town, because I haven't seen him, and my toilet is most definitely not fixed. Here's where the mystery sets in. For the last 5 days as I said, things have been relatively dry on account of no water. I came home today to see my bathroom resembling something like Kevin Kostner's Waterworld. The toilet (let's call it 'tank') had come right off the wall. The hose that connected it to the bowl was sticking up in the air and the bathroom was is a general state of mayhem.

Now I can't tell if Denis paid a visit and tried to fix it or if the toilet itself tried to commit suicide by wrenching itself off the wall. The toilet brush had definitely moved, as well as the toilet paper, but I don't know if that was human related or brought about by suicidal toilet antics.



Any solutions to this crime are welcome, and may be addressed to inane_in_name@hotmail.com. Or alternatively, leave a comment detailing your suspicions.