Back when we were in Canada, Ramu and I used to love ginger biscuits, whereas Sangram and Goel hated them, giving us the opportunity to finally use 'Bandar kya jaane adrak ka swaad' (Wiki: Someone without refined tastes cannot appreciate a fine thing) literally. In general, however, I would rather not want to experience famous idioms and proverbs literally (sar mundaate hi ole pade [Facing the repercussions of an action right after you take it] would be particularly painful, especially since I once got caught in a terrible hailstorm in Stuttgart).

But today morning, it almost happened. I boiled pasta to make lunch, and when it was done, needed to throw the excess water away. The kitchen sink here has a waste grinder-cum-disposer attached to it, so you are advised to not throw boiling water in it lest it damage the rubber cover. So I took the pot to the bath tub and started draining it. As soon as it started falling into the tub, the steam that rose fogged my spectacles, so, apart from the noise of falling water, I had no sensory clue as to what was happening. All this while, I was also mentally chuckling about emptying pasta water into a bath-tub, and thinking about how the hot water would hopefully 'sterilize' the tub. Well, it was a bad time to be geeky—what with my clouded specs, and my mind on dying microorganisms, I forgot that there was pasta in the pot, and happily upturned it, thinking about the boiling hot deluge I had subjected all the assorted microscopic flora and fauna to, visualizing those antiseptic soap advertisements where the soap kills all but 2 trembling microbes. It was after 5 seconds when the steam went away that I saw my lovely farfalle strewn all along the tub, and realized with horror what happened.

It was too late, however. A lunch's worth of pasta and 20 minutes of cooking time and heating costs, all down the drain, quite literally. I cussed to no one in particular, stamped my feet, gave myself a mental FML, and moved on, the only saving grace being that I had experienced a less dangerous version of throwing the baby out with the bath water. But it got dangerously close. A bathtub was indeed involved.