One afternoon, while I am home alone — the way I usually am — I hear the sound of water running. In a small, elderly building like the one I’m in, that’s not unusual.

There are six tenants and two floors, three units on each floor. The bathrooms and kitchens on each floor are directly above one another. So I can hear water gurgling softly all day long. It’s not just the plumbing but also the hot water being sent around the house to the radiators in each room, pumped up from the furnace in the basement.

But what I hear this afternoon is out of the ordinary. The tenant above me is a quiet young man called Robert. I rarely see him or hear him, yet we share a certain intimacy just from being one above the other. For instance, whenever he pulls the flush in his bathroom, I hear it in my bedroom. It’s not loud or oppressive, more like a kind of wheezy, watery sneeze. If I’m standing in my bathroom, the pipes rattle as the cataract from above thunders through. Whenever he takes a shower or drains his tub, I can hear the drumming of water overhead. Not only that, but there’s also a water-stain developing in the ceiling, where there’s a slight leak. I’ve already reported this to the landlady, but apparently it isn’t serious enough to take action.

This afternoon though, the sound I hear is of the toilet being flushed continuously. It’s like Robert has either fallen asleep while pressing down on the flush-handle or else there’s a malfunctioning refill valve in the flush-tank. I look out the window of my room and, sure enough, his car’s missing. Initially, I decide not to worry about it. Then, as the minutes tick by, I begin to fret. It’s a Saturday. Robert is often out — a fact known to me because of the Sound of No Flushing — returning only on Sunday night. If his toilet continues to sneeze all through the weekend, it will be an enormous waste of water. Also the nonstop gurgling will drive me crazy.

I could call the landlady’s son, Frank. He’s tall, blond and lanky, with Norse God good looks. It seems ridiculous to have to summon Thor to fix the upstairs flush! And I am unwilling to become the Local Crazy Foreigner who cries wolf at every tiny crisis. Meanwhile, the water continues to flow. I begin to think up wild scenarios: Robert’s been attacked by assassins and falls dead, straight onto the flush handle! Robert dies of cardiac arrest while flushing and grabs the handle in a death grip! Robert the Drug Smuggler flees the country after attempting to flush his stash of cocaine down the toilet, thus blocking it up!

By teatime I am a nervous wreck. I call Thor. He gallops over in five minutes, enters the upstairs flat and, 10 minutes later, success! He has turned off the water inlet and left a note for Robert. Then he comes down, checks my ceiling for leaks and thanks me for alerting him to the crisis. Smiles all around.

( Manjula Padmanabhan , author and artist, tells us tales of her parallel life in Elsewhere USA in this fortnightly series )

>marginalien. blogspot. in

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