Hitchhikers Guide to Puttur

Puttur a small town located near Mangalore. My parent’s were brought up there. I travel there annually during the summer for a function. To make it interesting, I have written a parody of my visits there.

Travelling to Puttur by car is very complex. You can only do it in the break of dawn through NH 48.142 which appears between NH 48 and NH 49 during 6:00 AM  and 6:52 AM in the morning. The highway has a minimum weight limit so it is required for you to stuff your car’s trunk with dirty laundry and outdated  goods to make up for the same. The highway portal has a higher chance of revealing itself when people travelling are very uncomfortable. It is advised to bring as many people as possible (A car sick child or a grandmother is a bonus)

The road to Puttur is guarded by an evil Jinn which annoys you with History lessons if your car has an interesting aura. To prevent imminent death from a boring History lesson, people make the car atmosphere as dull as possible. It is recommended to play songs first recorded in tape recorders about a 1022 times for the safety of the passengers .

Upon reaching Puttur, the bags must be carried out of the car in sets of Fibonacci numbers (starting at 3) by the passenger with the largest head (Me). Fish and vegetables which are hard to pronounce are part of the staple diet here. It is heinous to serve your own plate and the duty is allocated to your Aunt’s third cousin (Who comes out of the kitchen once a year to serve  you). Communicating with her is very simple, all she hears is “Serve me more”. The only way to convince her to change her mind is by challenging her to a cooking duel conducted annually at Madison Square Garden. She currently holds a streak of 24 wins.

Conversations in Puttur are pretty intellectual, people ignore mundane topics like “The meaning of life”, “Self Actualization” or “Women psychology”. They converse about neighbor’s  second son’s third internal marks, Grandpa’s second cousin’s toe surgery or “Why melody is so chocolaty”.  (Complex topics like potatoes, onions and kittens were not discussed around  me). There are about 245 rules while conversing. They are inscribed beneath the belly of the village cow Bella. You are given only one peek at her belly on your 18th birthday for 12.4 seconds and are never supposed reveal what you saw. So ideally whatever rules you learn may never be known/remembered by other people gathered… It is coined to make life interesting. Well known rules include talking only to people in the opposite corners of the room, ill logical statements supersede logical ones and minimum time limit of an hour . General trend of any discussion starts with the initiator broaching the topic, the mediator talking about his daughter’s 6th grade marks and the rest of the group scratching various parts of their body and repeating the scientific names. Points in the conversation needs to repeated four times with anger, frustration, sorrow and hysteria ( Order depends on your star sign and the length of your third toe). The winner is judged by the neighborhood cat and she/he has to take a victory lap around the city repeating the equations of motion as a rap.

The temple is a sacred point in the Puttur. It  is heavily funded by a wealthy man on CID’s most wanted list. It is a known fact that you get whatever you wish for during the festival if you push 3 old women, stamp on 14 children and jap 2 relatives on the nose. Asking for selfish desires like world peace or solving poverty is considered sacrilegious and the miscreant is punished to 7 years of Windows 8. Pious parents generally pray for the downfall of all their neighbors children’s grades. Youngsters pray for the well being of their ex-partners, fiancee and the tea shop owner who ratted them out to their parents.

Vehicles in Puttur are required to travel as per the combined locus of a circle, hyperbola and an inverted parabola in the 2nd Quadrant. Crossing the road is quite literally the solution to a 4th degree differential equation. Accidents are very rare during the day and by a sheer coincidence there are a few lady drivers during that time. It is rumored that ladies gain their abilities to drive after sunset but find it impossible to drive if you have garlic in the vehicle.

The Village fair is equivalent to a mall but people actually buy items from stalls here. The fair starts in the evening and concludes when the ice cream stalls run out. It is customary for strangers to meet at stalls spontaneously and inquire about your personal life. “Your Kids have grown taller and thinner” is the code to start/stop this conversation. At nights, to make people (un)comfortable while returning home, grandmothers sit in front of their window with their lights on. (Their silhouettes are believed to scare off evil.)

Sleeping in Puttur, prepares youth for the only real hardship of life (Marriage). You end up sleeping on the floor or couch to harden yourself. Bed bugs and mosquitoes are considered sacred here, Hence a blanket must never be washed nor mosquito coil can never be lit. Returning to Bangalore is easy as broken sleep caused by bed bugs and mosquitoes is a prerequisite to open the portal outside this place. The exit portal is monitored by a Succubus who seduces you to move to Indonesia and work at a perfume factory (Which she is a huge stake holder). To keep the Succubus from devouring passengers, it is vital to to ignore her. Passengers do this well by talking to seats, rear view mirrors and (very) rarely among themselves. The exuberance of reaching Bangalore safely prompts people to honk randomly and break traffic rules to feel at home again.

“Hope you liked it. Honestly, My native is a very normal. I like to let my imaginations get the better of me sometimes”