Gods
“How can you govern a country that has 500 types of cheese?” Charles de Gaulle once lamented. But if France is hard to rule, then imagine a subcontinent that has 300 million gods. De Gaulle didn’t have an answer to that one.
I’ve never really believed in what must be an apocryphal figure, but out of that pantheon there must be a divinity for almost everything. For example, there has to be a god of diarrhoea. There must be. I’ve worshipped at his temple often enough on my visits here in the past, and have spoken to him on the porcelain telephone on many an occasion.
It’s a source of some disappointment, therefore, that so far on this trip I have hardly suffered at all. But for a couple of minor bouts of no more than a morning or so there’s been nothing. I’ve been avoiding meat, I must admit, and the shits do seem to be tied up with ‘non-veg’ food.
But in any case it’s so damn hot I’m hardly eating anything at all. I’ve currently resorted to fulfilling my nutritional needs via fizzy drinks, of which I’m now consuming an unpardonable litre to a litre-and-a-half per day. There must be a god of Coke, Thums Up and Limca too, I reckon – they’re certainly earning their keep.
