We were at the final destination of our 10-day Europe tour. The dream trip. It was a group departure from India. The group was full of honeymooners and we, the already bored couple with a child, felt a little out of place amongst the love birds. Nevertheless, we were having a ball of a time visiting the exotic cities of the tiny continent.
The last stop before we flew home was Munich, Germany. An automobile hub, I was told. It was already late evening when we arrived and mid-November showers were soaking the streets. The city looked modern and well-planned with clean, wide roads, with not so huge but stylish structures. The itinerary for the day included a visit to the BMW showroom: the BMW Welt.
Ten days of travel, late check-ins and morning check-outs had left us weary and sleep-deprived. All of us were beginning to miss our homes.
As we arrived at the Welt, I alighted from the bus half-heartedly. Cars never delighted me much, neither did they ever catch the fancy of my five-year-old daughter. Nonetheless, I wanted to see what was so special about this one brand of car that drove virtually every male crazy.
It was windy and chilly as we got down and we repacked ourselves in oversized coats, caps AND gloves and set off to the showroom. In the showroom I found one of the largest collections of this wonder car... the BMW. The place was as big as an average Indian shopping mall and all that was on display there were cars and more cars. Cars of all possible sizes, structures, colours and models stood there as elegantly as queens of some royal family. It was a rare feast for our eyes. It was more so to my husband’s eyes.
He ran to them as though he was a lover meeting his long-lost sweetheart. For the next hour or so, he kept looking and re-looking at the cars from all angles, and got no less than a dozen photos clicked, not just in front of them but inside, beside and behind each one of them.
There was a huge crowd of visitors. People thronged the cars as though the cars were Hollywood superstars waving at them, and fought to get pictures clicked. But mind you, it was Germany. The fight was polite. Despite the crowd, there was no noise or rush. People decently queued up to click pictures, saying ‘thanks’ every time someone vacated the seats for them. They looked like aliens to me. How could someone be so restrained and well-behaved unless they were in a classroom or a job interview? It was something my Indian mind failed to comprehend.
After the pictures it was time to analyse the price tags of those metallic marvels. There were elaborate price plates displayed in front of each vehicle. The price was quoted in dollars and euros and I spent a good half an hour trying to convert it into rupees, every time missing out on the appropriate number of zeroes. The plates also carried details of its features, such as weight, height, length, width, power and other jargon that was Greek and Latin to me. I kept freaking out at the price while my husband kept drooling at the features. I wondered if the men there would care to spare a look, even if Sunny Leone appeared in her choicest attire that day. There was a magnetic aura of the BMW casting its spell on all of them...
In the midst of all this mayhem, I failed to notice my little girl. I had dropped her at a toy car in the showroom where she was amusing herself with a dozen other kids who were similarly abandoned by their car-struck parents. I went to check on her. When I found her, I saw that familiar, meaningful look on her face. She came to me hurriedly, and jumping lightly on her feet whispered in my ears, ‘Mom, I want to pee. It’s urgent.’
Now this was one scary little phrase that drove me mad every time she uttered it. And without exception, she always uttered it at exceptionally important or impossible situations. In my favourite restaurant when I am about to take that first bite of my super-favourite dish... or in the middle of a birthday party when the cake is half cut... or in a thriller movie when the suspense is just being revealed... or at a cultural programme when we are sitting in the first row and the show begins... the list of important situations was exhaustive. The impossible situations list was even more dreadful. When in a traffic jam with bumper-to-bumper traffic... or on the national highway while in the queue of the toll plaza.... or when I just buy a big cone of ice cream for her... or when I painfully dress her in the swimsuit and she is about to get into the pool... every instance had made me feel like pulling out my hair.
The situation today was worse. It was both important and impossible. I was in the middle of an important car-gazing experience which I didn't want to end abruptly. And, I was in a luxury car showroom in an international destination and found it impossible to find a place to relieve her urgency. Back in India, things would be a little easier. In such emergencies many a footpath and road corner had served the purpose (with due apologies to the Swachch Bharat campaign). But this was Munich! Wait a minute! Thank God it was Munich. One thing I had noticed during my Europe trip was that there were a good number of clean toilets and waste-bins once every few metres. I could easily find a washroom.
But it was a roughly 35,000 sq ft showroom on multiple floors. And from what I could assess from the look on my daughter’s face, I knew there was little time left, in fact very little. I quickly pulled her along looking out for the 'HE' and 'SHE' symbols. I found one that pointed around a corner. After I took the turn another board pointed upwards. A worker around explained that it was on the second floor in a restaurant. I pulled her to the lift and pressed all possible button-like structures. One of the two lifts took 30 painful seconds to descend from the 4th floor or so. We quickly moved in. It was three times the size of an average lift in India. I wondered if they had designed it to fit a car just in case they wanted to take it to a higher floor.
Weird ideas creep in at nerve-wrenching situations in life. I shut my mind and pressed the second floor button. Before the lift closed, a lady entered the lift and it began ascending. She appeared to be a lady of South-East Asian origin. They somehow look very friendly and polite and I generally kind of like them. She gave a faint smile but sadly that day I was too worked up to acknowledge or reciprocate it.
But her expression gradually changed from a smile to flat face to a totally perplexed and horrified expression. I wondered if I had offended her by not smiling back.
But I had no time to analyse. Rushing out of the lift at the second floor I ran towards the restaurant. The board bearing the toilet symbol appeared every few metres but the actual toilet was still elusive. All along, my little girl kept muttering ‘Mom, Mom....’ and I asked her to just stay shut till I found the toilets. Pulling her along in between the tables, chairs, turns and corners, I finally found the washroom hidden inside the restaurant.
I quickly closed the doors and ordered her to finish the job. That was when she gave one of the worst shocks of my life. She said she had already relieved herself.
‘What? How? When? Where? How could you do it?’
I felt dizzy for a while. My daughter had just done that in the BMW showroom! She didn’t remember where it was done. It could be anywhere. Near the toy car, at the turn, near the lift, in the restaurant... anywhere. There would be cameras all around. Somebody would have seen.
I stood mortified at the thought. I almost imagined the German security guards catching us and deporting us back to India, and TV9 flashing it as breaking news for a week. I was only thankful Hitler was no longer alive.
Meanwhile my little girl was feeling uncomfortable and cold with multiple wet layers of leggings on. I had to help her out of her ordeal.
I calmed myself and dragged her out of the restaurant hoping to change her dress in the bus. We got into the other lift and reached the ground floor, still wondering where she had actually done it.
Just then the other lift touched down. When the door opened I saw some five people inside the lift standing dazed, with odd expressions. They were staring at their wet shoes and wondering what was the pool of liquid on the lift floor.
I stared at my daughter. She stared back at me and shrugged. We quickly turned around and ran. I searched for my husband, caught his hand and pulled him out of the showroom and ran like crazy. The secret behind the myriad expressions of that lady in the lift, dawned on me only then. There ended our dream trip.
As of now, I no longer get mad when my little girl utters that scary phrase.... for I know that nothing can be worse than that embarrassment in Europe.