The Piss Dilemma

The Deccan flight from Jashedpur to Calcutta is about to take off and the person with me finds himself in an interesting situation. His seat has signs of some liquid which looks like water. Problem is that this water does not smell but has a lot of drops on the back part of the seat. Now this being not a full service flight, waiting for the air hostess to come and do something about the wetness is too much hassle. So this person goes ahead, takes out his handkerchief and wipes the wetness away.

Alas! The smell is now all over us. But still we are not sure if it is coming from the liquid that just landed into this guy's pocket or something else. Well, after cleaning the seat, he decides not to sit on it...talk about sacrifice!!! So he is sitting next to me and I am talking aloud about what if it was piss, against all our fears. So the gentleman takes out the hankey just to make sure and YUK...it has to be piss...both of us would have puked...we tuck the hankey in the seat and are fortunate to find two vacant seats...doesn't matter that we were ascending and the seat belt sign is on...this was a true emergency!!!!

I have thought about this incident for last one week and wondered how the whole thing could have been different. One option( which can lead to deflation of your ego) was to bend down and go close enough to find signs of smell which would have proved conclusively that it was piss. Now that seems like a good idea now but at that time, how could you commit yourself to smelling piss volunatrily!!! Other option, as one of my friend Rajeev Singh suggested, was to carry a litmus paper( not sure if it is called pH strip) and see if the liquid shows some alkaline inclinations...well, I have heard that Rajeev has done this to bull's excreta too without reaching any conclusions!!!

So jokes apart, what do you do in these situation. It seems to be the work of an innocent kid with an insufficient diaper. And with so much ambience smell hanging in the Indian air, it does take some effort to really find out if the liquid in front of you is piss or not. I have one learning: I would never use my hanky to clean some liquid in front of me...its something to struggle with this problem but it is too much of a stretch to go out and get that smelly wetness all in your pocket!!!