A tale of Casts and Towels

I always thought that I was good at geography but recently I have been constantly proven wrong by my colleagues, when they announce that we have won yet another project in an Indian city I never heard of in my life. Yes you guessed right, I am the one that gets to travel as a guinea pig to that mysterious exotic destination, and yes, it is even more mysterious that, considering how many projects we win that my bonuses keep getting smaller. But thats subject for another post

This time the selected exotic destination was the legendary city of Patna, in the North of India , capital of the State of Bihar, which has turned out to be the centre of a social experiment were towels have replaced casts.

Yes you heard right , towels , those apparently innocent piece of clothing that we have in our houses that hide more mysterious meanings that one can imagine.

My first questions about the true meaning of towels date from my early childhood. To be more specific from the early 80s when Spanish women had the odd tradition of dumping their spouses for the weekend and travel hundred of kilometers to cross the border and buy towels in Portugal. Of course at that age of innocence I assumed Portuguese cotton was a sort of precious gem and was a fetish similar to what shoes are nowadays.

It wasn’t till later in life when I start questioning the real reason behind that cotton obsession. Were Portuguese men more liberal than Spanish? Did the Fado caused same inhibitions to women as rap nowadays judging by their loose women behavior in the rap music videos?

And when I thought I have hit a dead end in my investigations I discovered today a new piece of evidence in the other side of the world, that can change forever the understanding of towels.

At first I did not realized of the extent of the discovery. It took me a few minutes, actually till the crowd of the meeting I was assigned to attend as poster boy of the company switched to hindi and I decided to abandon any attempt to show interest ( to be fair it was kind of a relief , as meeting was far from interesting in the first place)

At the beginning the towels covering every seat puzzled me but in a fan way. First I thought the roof of the meeting room may be leaking and They were was a way to protect the chair upholstery.

Later I thought maybe we were all expected to go swimming in the Ganges as part of a celebratory session to celebrate the new contract. I even thought that the mysterious door at the end of the room hided a sauna and we were supposed to discuss the clauses covered only by those towels like if we were in a Roman Thermal Bath discussing the Republic with Julius Caesar.

Then the hindi switch make me observe the room more in detail to distract my mind and it was when I realized of the situation. The towels were not all the same. The ones by the table were pristine white, and those on the outside were blue. I asked, my always well informed colleague, about the situation, and he explained that white towels were for those with seniority ( white collar ) while the blue ones were specifically selected to separate the subordinates ( blue collard ).

The situation took another twist when in our next meeting where only the higher authority attending was granted the towel privilege while the rest ( not Government members) were exposed to the bare chairs. How humiliating it was!

We human beings get quickly used to the privileges I must say, and not getting the towel was hurting in the same way when the air hostess points you towards the end of the aircraft and you say goodbye to your last hope of getting upgraded to business class.

Are towels a Masonic symbol? Maybe not , but an advice for those wanting to live like the rich and famous, forget about the Italian sport car, buy a good Portuguese towel.