The Fungus Freak Out

The tales from the long weekend vacation will be related in exacerbating detail another day as there is a different issue of much greater interest running my life at the moment – entitled the Mold Saga.

Northern India was great, from the countless lively streets of Dehli to the eerily quiet desert plains of Rajasthan. But as I was gallivanting around the country - unbeknownst to me back in Bangalore - the beginning of a mold invasion was stealthily unfolding underneath my floor mats and on my top of my nightstand. Upon my return on Sunday night (due to the 13 hours of traveling and general grogginess that comes after schlepping around the desert for days with congested sinuses and hacking cough) my tired eyes only managed to focus on the fluffy white featherbed and its promise of deep sleep - and not the fluffy white spores next to it and their promise to wreck havoc in my life.

The next morning, after awaking with a pounding headache, shuffling about my room frantically searching for my keys in a post-long weekend daze, I was shocked to discover odd shampoo lather-like foam coagulating on the exterior of a large straw box on my nightstand. Filled with a distinct nervous fear that upon closer inspection I will most definitely be thoroughly repulsed, disgusted, and nauseated at what I find… I touch the sticky, soggy powder and within 0.297 seconds realize that what I’m rubbing between my thumb and index fingers is in fact a clump of fungus, releasing billions of spores into my airspace.

With only a couple minutes to catch the bus, in a state of shock and utter revulsion, I washed my hands and dashed off, too confused and grossed out to begin considering the implications of letting a colony of mold rapidly propagate without restraint throughout my bedroom for an entire week in my absence.

I bravely marched straight to my room when I got home from work, after secretly hoping all day that the mold sighting/touching could easily be attributed to a minor hallucination and that all was well and perfectly right in my fungus-free world. But as the gods of under-bed dust bunnies, shower curtain mildew, and mold infestation would have it… my worst suspicions became reality.

1. Sprawled out across my bed was the moldy box, oozing its fungus grossness all over my newly cleaned lavender sheets. Apparently the “house boys” (the politically correct word for male maids in my building) decided it would be a fantastic idea to redecorate my room, starting with throwing my fungus diseased straw box onto my goose-down pillow thus dusting my bed with billions of infectious mold spores.

2. The smaller straw box now had a thick coating of congealed white paste, with some was touching my hairbrush.

3. The colorful mats I recently purchased to cover up the drab grey linoleum flooring were now the massive, floor-wide prime breeding grounds for a gooey fungus mess.

It was one disturbingly nauseating scene of supreme ickyness.

After a couple minutes of frantic, out of mind despairing cries of horror to my flatmate, I sat crouched in a little ball in the middle of my apartment - strategically equidistant from my mold infested bedroom and the dark corner of mysterious dead-animal smell – and with my eyes tightly shut tried desperately to pretend I wasn’t living in a sea of icky dirty germs.. but I was surrounded with no escape. The mold had taken over my life, as my puzzling 2-week long, resistant-to-all-medication cold, my flatmate Winnie’s hacking cough, general feeling of illness and the funky smell in dark corners were all readily explained. (A Google search helped explain to us the dire situation we were faced with http://healthandenergy.com/mold_dangers_&_remedies.htm) And now it dared to invade and conquer the walls, floors and beds in our apartment!

Paralyzed in a state of germ/fungus fear, I immediately called a sane, rational “I’m not afraid of dirty things” boy to come to our rescue. Scott, who lives in a dry, fungus free apartment on the 5th floor, calmly removed all obviously fungus infested items and politely indulged a few of my juvenile freakout rants. We called Prem, the company’s outsourced caretaker of the apartments they owned, so he could witness the hazardous conditions firsthand.

He said he’d send the pesticide people over the next day, but I scoffed. What do bug people know about crazy mold invasions? I began to miss my previous life of convenience in the US, where there is a 24 hour 1-800 number for any and every emergency. Had an out-of-control party, trashed the house while your parents were out of town and are going out of your mind cleaning before they arrive in 5 hours? 1-800-Dial a Maid. Did your sewage line backup in your 150 year old Georgetown house and is currently flooding out the basement aka bedroom of your 2 best girlfriends? 1-800-Plumber. (Unfortunately, I can attest to the latter.)

Slumping into the couch, I realized I had no idea who to call to remedy this problem, or even if there was anybody to call. Despair set in. Mulling over the obtrusive dankness and soggy atmosphere of our ground level apartment, Winnie and I soon agreed that this fungus problem would never be completely resolved. The only solution would be to relocate.

So, after a flurry of emails between us and the housing management personnel, in which we briskly rebutted their claim that if pesticide people went ‘spritz spritz’ here and there with some toxic chemical cocktail (which is probably illegal in the US) the mold problem would be erradicated forever. The conclusion - this weekend we’re moving up a couple floors to another apartment(hopefully with a fabulous palm tree/city vista.)

Have to run off now to the launch of a microfinance joint venture downtown – delving into the excitement of the non profit world with jolly British folk. Cheers!