Pu Hao

A strange smell. Is it cigarette smoke? Smelly socks? A corpse? Ha-ha, I laugh nervously to myself. There now, Murthy, it’s a shady hotel, but this is not a movie.

I switch on the light and the aircon. It seems to be coming from the bathroom. A deep breath. Slow, measured movements and the handle is all the way down. I push the door open, look around. Sheepishly, I scratch “corpse” off the list.

The smell is a little more over-powering. Fear morphs to anger, now that I’m no longer in any perceptible danger. Where is this coming from?

______

“Room Service? Hello? Please come up, lah. Quick. Room 712. Chi bai Yi shi Er (The laowai can count in Chinese!)”

“Click zoo pop schwick pop bing”

“I no understand Chinese. Come up, lah. Urgent. Fly like the wind.”

“Um..you want…ah…Fly lice?”

“I DO NOT WANT FRIED RICE. I want you to come up. Fast”

Click.

______

Ah yes, come in please. In here, the bathroom. Can you smell that? You know what that is? Pu hao, Pu hao (Not good, not good).

Housekeeping walks into the loo. She shoots a curious look in my direction – what’s the fuss about? I point with both hands. My eyes widen, my eyebrows rise high above my curly locks, my nostrils flare. Pu hao, Pu hao.

And she laughs.

She sits down on the ground, and she laughs.

She speaks to someone over her walkie-talkie, is soon joined by another of the house-keeping staff, and they both sit down on the bathroom floor and they laugh.

I am not amused. I launch into a series of hand gestures and a random assortment of the dozen Chinese words I know. I am angry and they need to get it. I will not tolerate….

And then it hits me. Shit. They think I’ve done it.

______

The housekeeping staff very kindly cleaned the little plops of poo off the toilet seat, grinning as they did it. They greet me with a polite “Ni Hao” every morning, but giggle as soon as my back is turned. Indians, they say to themselves, are pigs.

Poo. How? I haven’t the foggiest. But they think it’s me.

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