Oh Golgappa, its Shit!

Also published on Huffington Post, India 

Indian culture has always prided itself on its openness about bodily functions. We are firm believers of doing it all in the open while closing our minds to uncomfortable truths that pose a threat to our delusions of grandiosity.We spit, shit, pee, dump garbage in the open because we believe in keeping our houses clean and surroundings dirty.

We are a proud nation of closed minds and open defecation.

All you need to do is crane your neck out of the window of your train to see rows of behinds showcasing our potty culture. Now before you lunge at my throat for being insensitive to an India for whom even a toilet is a luxury, let me tell you that the scores of newly built toilets that followed Modi’s clarion call of Swachh Bharat have very few takers.

Why be confined to airless, waterless structures masquerading as toilets, when you can fertilize vast fields with your refuse!

Of late, India has been witnessing a potty revolution. Why else would scores of people throng to theatres to watch a thespian actor talk non-stop about his blocked bowel movements for over two hours and make the film a blockbuster? With our new found gut feeling, we can denounce politics and piles in the same breath.

It has now emerged that even our much loved chaatwalas are at the forefront of this revolution. Recently, a series of studies conducted on samples of Delhi’s street food has revealed that the secret ingredient that makes it so legendary lies not in the combination of spices but deep within us. It’s the presence of faeces that makes it extra yummy and makes us swoon with ecstasy, later with food poisoning.

No wonder ganda-nallahwala chat corner’s gol-gappa tastes so yummy! 

I think it’s a brilliant marketing strategy. Every time I say oh shit, I am seized with a craving for golpgappas. Once I am amongst a throng of women gulping down balls of heaven, screaming bhaiya aur, bhaiya aur, all I think of is, oh shit! 

Courtesy - Mail Today

If we have survived to tell the tale, we owe it all to Maggi, the 2 minute wonder that has been coating our intestines with lead. Funny thing is, all this while we thought this Nirvana in a bowl for the cooking-challenged was a just alump of fried maida with masala seasoning. But now thanks to new laboratory tests, we know it’s not only making us fat but ‘lead’ing us to our graves with an extra tadka of MSG.

Bullshit!

What harm can a little bit of lead do to a nation of bravehearts that has been consuming tonnes of pesticides and carbide laced with veggies and fruits? And thanks to our love for all things Chinese, we are raising a generation that has ingested so many dubious chemicals while playing with made-in-China toys that their innards can survive even a radioactive leak. Of course, the same cannot be said for Delhi’s International airport that went into panic attack after a radioactive leak was reported from a medical consignment.

It comes as no surprise that people we were more appalled about a possible ban on Maggi than the presence of excess of lead and MSG.

Getting to the bottom of faecal matters, I no longer run after pigeons screaming profanities when I see them carpet-bombing my balcony with their shit. I simply run up to them hug them and call them revolutionaries. Or maybe, I could collect their poop, strike a deal with my local chaat corner and become the next Ambani! As such blogging doesn’t pay.