Bypass Operations

====================================================================

"....I don’t know how many worlds there may be in the universe, but anyone who
had brought me a spoonful of mustard at that precise moment could have
had them all.  I grow reckless like that when I want a thing and can’t
get it.

Harris said he would have given worlds for mustard too.  It would have
been a good thing for anybody who had come up to that spot with a can of
mustard, then he would have been set up in worlds for the rest of his
life.

But there!  I daresay both Harris and I would have tried to back out of
the bargain after we had got the mustard.  One makes these extravagant
offers in moments of excitement, but, of course, when one comes to think
of it, one sees how absurdly out of proportion they are with the value of
the required article.  I heard a man, going up a mountain in Switzerland,
once say he would give worlds for a glass of beer, and, when he came to a
little shanty where they kept it, he kicked up a most fearful row because
they charged him five francs for a bottle of Bass.  He said it was a
scandalous imposition, and he wrote to the Times about it..."

...Jerome K Jerome:Three men in a boat

**********************************************************************************************************

Yes, there are weak moments in everyone's life when absurd promises are made.

And, come payback time, one tries to wriggle, back out, haggle, and bypass conveniently.

The other day I read a news item which went something like this:

A man in a crisis promises God that, if he gets out alive, he would sell his most precious
possession, a Stradivarius violin, and donate the proceeds to charity.

But when the crisis blows over, he puts up his Stradivarius for sale along with a ball point
pen as a compulsory combo priced at:

Stradivarius: $ 10

Pen: $ 10,000

**********************************************************************************************************

My son's marriage was fixed for February 16, 2008.

But in our Brahmin community in AP, the groom can't get married unless he has gone
through the sacred thread ceremony (Upanayanam).

Somehow or other, we couldn't perform this ritual till then. So, a date was fixed one week
before his wedding day for going through this.

Elaborate arrangements were made and a Purohit was engaged.

The evening before the ceremony, the Purohit insisted that as per Vedic customs, my son
had to get his head tonsured, leaving five tufts of hair here and there (Panchasikha).

Obviously my son put his foot down and bargained to waive the prerequisite.

The Purohit agreed after some resistance for a bypass operation:

Just pull five strands of hair...but charged double.

He was then asked to take cold water bath (3 pots full...udaka shanti).

My son has an aversion to cold water baths..even in boiling summer he has the geyser on.

As a compromise, he was asked to take hot water bath...and he said he declined this too
since he had always had one bath a day, in the morning, and the quota was over for the
day.

The Purohit then sprinkled a few drops of water on his head and charged triple...

When I had to perform my house-warming ceremony (Grihapravesh), the Purohit, after all
the jap-tap was through, led me outside the house, took a brass plate, poured some water
on it, mixed some chun, kumkum and stuff till the mixture looked blood-red, made me
break a red-blooded pumpkin on the ground and poured the liquid all over the walls and
did such gory rituals reciting mantras all the while.

I asked him what was going on and he replied that according to strict Vedic injunctions,
a goat has to be sacrificed but since we brahmins are vegetarian folks, the damn thing
that went on was a mimicry!!!

But he charged me the price of a well-fed goat...



===================================================================