Things Indians Love

Indians love wall calendars. Not the desk calendar with funny or inspiring quote of the day, or the spiral bound agenda calendar for keeping business schedules, or the small personal calendars for people with too much free time to plan and write down everything. The billions of walls in India are adorned by calendars with a poorly drawn picture of elephant head Ganesha during midlife crisis - he is alone in the midst of an array of junk food and obviously has not been to the gym for a long time. Yes, those are the ones Indians love. In India it is akin to sacrilege to leave a wall bare without a single calendar, may it be at home, business, school, or workplace. Even in an abandoned empty room with nothing but cobweb hanging from the roof Indians would hang a calendar on the wall in an effort to give it a homely look.

Despite the numbers, Indian calendars, like Indian movies - all look alike: a single big brightly colored picture printed on a flimsy paper to support the heavy weight of information worth twelve months printed on even thinner papers. While rest of world with commitment issues wants different picture for each month, if not for each day, Indians prefer to grow old with one picture. Well, even if they wanted, there is not many to choose from. Besides Ganesha, only a few other deities such as Rama, Laxmi, Shiva, and Krishna make frequent appearances. Krishna appears in double role: as a butter eating obese baby and as a woman pleasing amorous adults.

Indians prefer calendars to multifunction PDAs: calendars are cheaper and do not need as frequent software updates. For Indians, looking up the date is just one of the many use of calendars - not even the primary one. When it comes to information, like the country, Indian calendars are overcrowded. Indians shove two, if not more, calendars in one: the English calendar, the Indian name for Gregorian calendar, and the local lunar calendar. Indians stuff the calendars with pictorial depiction of lunar cycle and detail calculations of solar position.

They populate the calendars with cryptic descriptions of auspicious moments for all occasions: the lucky time for going to market to catch the best bargains; the propitious hour for getting married to have the biggest family; the favorable days for fasting to gain the most brownie points for the after life. Indians rely on the calendars for national, religious, and bank holidays to avoid committing the mortal sin of working on a holiday - for Indians working on normal day is sin enough. Indians use calendar for marking the upcoming social and cultural events: marriage of people they do not know well enough to remember, the funeral rites of relatives they are too close to avoid, birthday party of the daughter of their superior they are too scared to omit, house warming party of the rich neighbor that is too lavish too miss.

But Indians do not stop there: like the population, Indian calendars are overworked. Others may use paintings or carpets to decorate their walls, but Indians use calendars. For Indians, the image of god makes any calendar holy, and they love to perform daily religious rituals for each and every calendar. Indians choose calendar to express their personal beliefs: Ganesha with a hairy elephant head sitting on a mountain for authentic believers, Ganesha with golden jewelry in a marble temple for those who prefer more professional look.

Indians only use free calendars, and hence it is measure their self worth. Every business organization, small or big, from government office to grocery store, from national bank to neighborhood barber, gives out calendars to employees and customers according to its respective worth. Indians do use calendar for some practical purpose: as a substitute for whitewash for the walls, or to hide the damage or hole in the wall.

By the end of the year, the calendars lose all luster: torn and tattered from overwork and overuse they become unrecognizable under the thick coating of residue left from the daily offerings. But Indians love them too much to replace: they just cover it with a new one and the tradition continues. Calendars are the Swiss knives that come handy in the frontline of social, cultural, and religious warfare Indians wage everyday. No Indian ever enters a new house without a calendar, and no old calendar ever leaves an Indian house.

Tags: , Indian Calendar, Indian Habits, Wall Calendar