Bathroom, Bedroom

Via Prem Panicker’s Twitter, I come across this marvellous news story:

Now, daring couples can bathe in bedrooms!

The story tells us about this new trend of “an open-planned bathroom-bedroom” that “features a deep-soaker bath, double vanity, frameless shower, and strategically-placed toilet—all in full sight of the king-size bed.”

I experienced something similar to this during my recent book tour. In three of the five cities I went to, I was booked into a five-star hotel chain that had rooms with varying degrees of, um, openness between the bathroom and the bedroom. In Delhi, the bathroom partition was translucent, and you could see the silhouette of the person inside. This might be considered romantic if your partner is bathing inside—but surely not for other activities. And what if there were guests in the room?

Worse, you couldn’t lock the door. And there were no hooks or rods inside to hang clothes. I suspect the designers thought of this as a feature, not a bug.

Also, there was no noise insulation whatsoever. So if you’d had rajma and rice for lunch, and went into the loo to let some of it out, anyone in the room would not only see you, they’d also hear you.

This led to an embarrassing episode on the afternoon of my Delhi launch, when my Hachette editor was hanging out with me in my room while the partner napped on the bed. But I won’t go into details here. We’re all still scarred by the incident.

The Kolkata branch of the hotel had completely transparent bathroom doors and walls—glass so clear you could walk into it—but the bathroom section could be shut off from the bedroom by sliding a substantial wooden door shut (again, unlockable). This was fairly heavy, and could easily have been used as a line of defence in a medieval fortress. I was staying alone in the room, and embarrassing moments did not arise. Also, there was no rajma, and the sushi was good.

Anyway, I guess I’m just growing old, and young people like open bathrooms and all that. Fine. Whatever. I’ll just blog about the good old days then.