A Loo Chat

There are only 2 types of people in the world.

Those who read in the loo and those who don't.

Iam of the former and it gladdens my weary heart when I go to a house and finds that the occupants have some well thumbed books in their loo. Theres comfort in books when you are doing your business. Knowledge through one end and disposal through the other. Theres some kind of poetic beauty in the whole thing.

Of course there are those who disagree. They find it disgusting.

Disgusting!? You are okay with taking a bath in the same place, your tooth brush is also exposed to your poo fumes if that's what you are worried about. Pray tell me, how ,in all that's holy, is reading a book in the loo disgusting?

Has anyone ever wondered where all that currency you hold in your hand has been? Trust me , you will be doing a Lady Macbeth if you knew.

Being an Indian, I have heard the weirdest reasons not to read in the loo.

Books are supposedly Saraswati.

The Goddess of Knowledge.

You generally don't take a lady to the loo with you. Going with the kind of stuff I have seen on the Internet, I guess this cannot be termed as a rule but taking Saraswati to the loo is bad news. You will probably be reborn in your next life as a lice on Yul Burner's head.

But come on; how long can someone stare at the tiles? What do people who don't read in the loo do? Apart from doing do do? Ever wondered about the origin of bathroom graffiti? Give a man a pen, a loo and 15 minutes and he either becomes a poet , artist or Larry Flynt. Give him a book.

I come from a glorious line of bathroom readers.If it wasn't for our bowel movements, we would have had the IQ of Paris Hilton.

A special thanks should also go to John Harrington, who invented the western style toilet. There was something very ungraceful about the times prior to that when combined with a book. I shudder to think back at those days.

The reason why I honour this practice today is due to a visit we had from some friends of ours some time back . One day after they had settled in and over a glass of Chablis, they revealed to us that they felt right at home when they noticed the books in the loo.

I had never realized. I wanted to throw my arms around them and cry with joy.

Soul mates.

What I love about reading in the toilet is that you read in small doses. Its a lot like the Atkins Diet. You think you can eat all the meat you want but you really cant eat too much meat in one sitting. Iam reading 'Lets Kill Gandhi' which is a monster of a book .A book like that in normal situation would intimidate me but in the loo it becomes something like a husband who is gradually disposed off by the arsenic wielding wife.

Now here's the question of the week.

Which is the best book to be read in the loo?

(Life and other such nonsense is not yet out so it doesn't count)