Thursday, June 18, 2009

Take that

I had spent my childhood in a small town in Gujarat and my engineering from an even smaller town in Haryana. Big city pollution was always a tough ask for me to handle and so Calcutta's grime and dust atmosphere had me gasping for a breath of fresh air. Being Calcutta there was no such whiff coming so I had to launch a desperate search for any cures I could find to the chronic sniffles that had become part of my daily existence.

My road to a sniffle free existence lay in the wonder and ancient history of Dabur Chyawanprash. I don't know what they put in there but it sure as hell does the job! A lot of people always give me a hard time for having such a feeble immune system and hide bound weirdo habits like having two spoons of Chyawanprash a day which are more suited to doddering 80 year olds wrapped in mufflers and sustained by heavy sweaters. However Chyawanprash works for me and you can call me what you will.

I carried on with my Chyawanprash fixes in the US too as there ain't no shortage of Indians around thereby of Indian products. Only today did I notice the most interesting thing about the jar it is contained in. Beneath the image of the flowing white bearded Hindu sage and on the jar of what is an essential component of our 'Hindu' greatness, the ancient science of Ayurveda, the packing address reads "Dubai, U.A.E". Eat that Sangh Parivar maniacs and the Indian Mujahideen crackpots.

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