A leaky faucet and the pipedream

Whoopi Goldberg famously said, “I don’t have pet peeves... I have whole kennels of irritation.’ She must have been talking about me! Generally a sunny person, I seem to find something to complain about all too often. “The ice cream is too crunchy,” “The tea is too sugary,” or “The plane landing is too bumpy.” That day was no exception. 

“Pa, the pipe is leaking...oh, it’s so horrid’’, I frantically texted my father.

That very morning, I had found, to my irritation, the culprit of this piece — the pipe leak — right at the top of the bathroom window. I complained to my mother, but when she hemmed and hawed, I texted pa!

My father had gone to the bank and was in the midst of a very important meeting when this rather irreverent text from me pinged on his screen! As he later admitted, very discreetly, he looked up the message and was more than a bit amused on reading it. He excused himself to talk to me, his ‘’favourite woman in his life,” his one and only daughter.

“Kanna (yes, no matter what the age, I would always be his dear young child), what is the matter? Why have you interrupted my meeting?”

In no mood for exchanging niceties, I replied curtly, “It’s uncle’s washroom pipe. It leaks into my bathroom. Every afternoon, as soon as I nod off, the faucet goes ‘drip, drip, drip,’ interrupting my sleep. To top it all, the pipe seeps into the roof of the washroom. And amma isn’t paying any attention.”

Appa pacified me, “It’s a Sunday, so we will have to wait till it’s Monday. Oh dear... Monday is a holiday, so that would mean Tuesday would be the latest, when the plumber can come look it up.”

I groaned aloud. I would have to tolerate this torment till Tuesday. I grumbled. Then, when appa told me to look on the bright side, my brain wandered off. 

Maybe I could pen my thoughts into a tome, My Agony and My Agony (with due apologies to Michelangelo, whose biography The Agony and the Ecstasy had far more impressive roots, I must admit). Maybe it would make waves in the literary circles, and I would win acclaim with it as my homely faucet continued to drip its way into victory as the protagonist of this piece. 

I sat on the bed, building mighty castles in the air. Like J R R Tolkien said, “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities,” at that moment, my sky-high dreams were fetching a reprieve from my mundane reality. 

True, the day had begun on a Stygian note, but I had come to the conclusion that I would accept these failings—mine and my home’s—stoically, in the manner of some great Greek philosopher. 

After all, one faucet could not a life ruin / nor a city destroy!