Posted by
Vicar on
Oct 20, 2014; 2:32am
URL: http://sundownersadventures.385.s1.nabble.com/Don-t-give-me-the-shits-tp5707032.html
How many times do you catch up with your friends and the first thing you ask them is how many times have they been to the loo? Or, do you still have the shits?
I was just reading a part of Grant Short’s memoirs when I recalled those early morning conversations. Nowadays we might consider it bad manners to enquire about people’s toilet habits as our first greeting, but things were different back then.
If not the first morning in Kathmandu it would not be too long after when this was a general topic of conversation. As much as we had been warned and as careful as we might be, the “Bug” got to us. There were not too many to escape the clutches of the dreaded ‘Delhi Belly’, ‘Teheran Trots’ or similar words to describe the conditions of our internal workings.
I recall one evening when a few of us ate at a local restaurant in Lahore when, as we waited for our meals to arrive, we sat having a cold drink. Those of us still standing and chancing our luck decided to try the local food. No sooner had we been able to finish about half the contents of our bottles of drink that one of the girls went missing. I enquired of her friend where she had disappeared to. “Oh! She had to run off to the loo,” all from half a bottle of drink. I swear this “Bug” has a way of reconnecting the internal organs. It is able to connect the opening of the body direct to the exit. Out of the small group at the restaurant, a few decide to forgo the food available should they have to follow the missing girl to the back room.
For those more unfortunate than me an urgent toilet stop was a constant request. Another recollection was the bus stopping in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in India, although that is almost an oxymoron, there is really no place that is nowhere in India. A girl who had been gripped by the “Bug” had to make an urgent request and with little places to hide from everyone she squatted in the middle of an empty field. The meerkats must have all been lying down when she first squatted but within seconds, up pops all these heads with prying eyes. Do I need to say that the heads belong to males? The woman off in the distance were hard at work.
And so the question of, how many times have you had a shit today? Was as regular as we were.
All the weight loss programs we read and hear about that are available now, have nothing on the way the “Bug” could bring down your weight in just a few weeks. The stomach cramps and sitting gently trying to avoid passing wind just in case, is the possible reason people do not seek out this weight loss method.
The regularity of the question did not start to dissipate until we were well into Turkey. Then there were those of us who, out of desperation, kept up with our daily dose of ‘Lomotil’. The medication had no real effect until it was not needed. Yes that is right, the passage of goods was consistent until the tide turned, now just the opposite set in. When the goods train is held up by a derailed carriage and nothing is getting through, it is just a big of a concern as the other. One knows that all the European delights consumed over several days would be ejected at some point, or would or could they? It is only after stopping the Lomotil, a few German beers and several days later that we give birth to a water melon, ouch!!! Just a part of us wished the shits to return, if only for a day.
Vicar