The Sky Is Falling Down!

This week, a man holding a pot of very watered down paint rang our doorbell. He said (well, kind of) he was going to paint our bathroom ceiling. This would bring to an end, by Indian standards, the saga of our our deteriorating bathroom ceiling. Only by Indian standards, in that he only intended to use the one coat of watery paint.

Back to the beginning: Last year, while Mum was still visiting, one of the bathrooms in the flat above us developed a leak. A damp patch began growing in the corner of one of our bathrooms above the bath. This patch grew...and grew... The paint on the ceiling began crinkling, then lifting, then falling delicately down into the bath. This was a bit of a nuisance, because you had to rinse all these flakes out of the bath every night before you could fill it. But they were just paint flakes, after all the paint had fallen off an area to expose the underlying building material, that too began falling into the bath. In a normal construction, under the paint and before the concrete would be plaster, but we're in India, and extraneous processes like plaster are...well, missing. So now along with the paint flakes from the newly damp areas I've got concrete falling into the bath. Sometimes it's concrete dust...sometimes it's rather big lumps. Cleopatra got to bathe in asses milk, I get to bathe in water with gritty, flaky bits in it. And the bits fall without notice...even while I'm in the bath. I feel like Chicken Licken - the sky is falling down!

So I go to the maintenance department to request someone comes to fix the ceiling. Obviously no one comes. So two days later I go back and request again. Fifteen minutes later two boys ring my doorbell. They look at my bathroom ceiling and my bath covered in paint and concrete debris. One of them climbs into the bath and peers out the window to see if he can see what the problem is. He can't crane his head around enough to get a good look, so he climbs out the window to stand on a narrow ledge. Remember, I live 15 storeys up. I wanted the leak fixed...but maybe not that much! I was mightily relieved when he climbed back through the window. He had a brief chat in Hindi with his co-worker, and then he turned to me and said "paint". Believing he was describing what was falling into the bath, I added "concrete". He repeated "paint". It then dawned on me he was not describing the problem, he was outlining the solution! Now I might not know that much about home maintenance and repairs, but I'm damn sure paint alone doesn't fix leaky pipes. I declare I want the "In Charge" (what they call a supervisor here, because they're "in charge") to look at my flaky ceiling. So the boys go away and, as expected, no one comes to see my ceiling.

So Rod and I go down to the maintenance room together. This has worked well for us in the past, because if we go alone, they try to explain their inaction by blaming us. "I spoke to your wife", the In Charge says. "No you didn't", I reply. "We came, but there was no one home". "We were in all day", Rod replies. You'd think they'd learn that if we're both in the same room those lies aren't going to be successful... I tell him bathing is not a pleasant experience because things keep falling on me. "Come and fix our ceiling", Rod declares. "When will you be home?", the In Charge wants to know. I check my watch, and add 10 minutes to the current time.

Remarkably, 10 minutes later our doorbell rings. In walk the In Charge and a clutch of maintenance men. I show Henny Penny, Drakey Lakey, Goosey Lucy, Foxy Loxy and the In Charge my ceiling. The In Charge states he has already had the leak above fixed, and my ceiling is just "drying out". Rod doesn't believe him...at all. It is agreed paint alone is not the solution, they're going to scrape off the old flaky paint too. Not one of the maintenance men have brought any tools with them so they're going to have to come back to do this. We're really quite surprised when one does return within half an hour.

So then I had a large patch of damp, bare concrete to look at when I had my bath. Fine crystals like salt began to form on the patch. Nothing fell on me for almost a week, but then the crystals started floating down like snowflakes. It still wasn't asses milk, but it wasn't as bad as before. They didn't make so much noise when they hit the water to startle me from my reading.

But then nothing happened. I expected the In charge had signed it off because I'd stopped hassling him. So I was pleasantly surprised to see a layer of badly applied, overly thin paint covering up the bare concrete. After Rod scraped the worst of the paint off the tiles, in low light conditions you'd almost believe it was a finished job!