Toilet Tales

On my last day in Dharamsala, I lost my Indian mobile phone down a squat toilet.

I was at a restaurant having a cup of chai with my friend Cheryl. Since I spend a large part of my days in the mountains drinking chai in little chai stalls and cafes, I have to pee quite often. So I ran upstairs to the squat toilet on the roof of the restaurant, and forgetting that I had stuffed my mobile into the back pocket, I pulled down my pants and the phone went flying out. It seemed to skid in slow motion through the damp floor of the bathroom, into the toilet bowl, and then plunked into the dirty water below before I could catch it. The water in the toilet bowl was dirty (as in, pieces of poop were floating in it), and I could see my phone flashing and vibrating right there on the bottom. I tried to fish it out with a toilet scrubber, but with no luck.

So I went ahead and peed (I had to go!) and ran downstairs to tell Cheryl about the phone. I tried to whisper it through my giggles, but the young man running the restaurant must have heard us and asked across the room, "Your mobile go down toilet?" I laughed yes, and then he translated this to the entire restaurant full of Tibetans. There was a collective murmur and surprised chatter among them as they wondered what to do, and eventually lots of laughter when they saw that even I thought it was pretty funny.

The restaurant owners asked if I could see the phone in the toilet. I told them about the flashing lights in the bowl, and one of the women who owned the restaurant ran upstairs to see what she could do. But even after reaching her bare hand down the messy toilet, she could not find it. My phone had gone down the pipes.

Luckily I don't have a huge need for a mobile phone anymore, since I am traveling alone now and don't need it to meet up with anyone again in the future. When I was having dinner later with my monk friend Jamyang at his apartment, I told him the story. After his initial worry and sympathy, he had a blast making jokes about my phone in the toilet.

First Jamyang jokingly suggested we call the police and have them conduct a city-wide police search in the Dharamsala plumbing for my phone. Then he decided to call my number to see if we could hear it ringing somewhere in the city pipes. When it did not ring, he said, "Phone sleepy." Then Jamyang's cousin Nima Dolma, who was excited to hear a word in English she recognized, repeated, "Phone! Sleepy time!" Then after much thought, she added, "Phone! Break-fust! Eat!" Jamyang laughed and corrected her, "Dinner! Dinner eat!" Later, as we were watching the Olympics long distance swimming marathon, Jamyang exclaimed, "Morel - your phone Olympics! Toilet!" and made swimming motions with his hands in imitation of my mobile somewhere in the Dharamsala plumbing. It was a sad, sad day for my phone, but it seemed to be a good source of entertainment for everyone else.