For extra long prayer

Yesterday, I was in the supermarket cruising the incense and ‘prayer essentials’ aisle – as you do.  And there I found that advertising nirvana – something I didn’t realise I’d been looking for, but now I knew about it, realised, I’d wanted for years.

And what was that elusive product, I hear you cry? Why, it was extra long incense.

No more having to get up and change the incense stick every hour – and believe me that is a chore and not some hippy essential.

Don’t get me wrong, I do meditate, but burning incense is something of a necessity from time to time for more basic aromatic reasons.  Frankly, sometimes India smells bad. Even in my swanky housing development there are moments when the drains just don’t smell good. And then, well, incense will restore a more harmonious fragrant balance.

So, as you can imagine, I was thrilled to find incense that will burn for 3 hours. 3 hours!!

Obviously the product is not aimed at the sensitive western nose, it’s part of the standard prayer offerings every Hindu household makes daily. Flowers, incense and prayers are offered in the personal prayer rooms of homes all over the country. And according the incense box, longer burning incense is apparently used for only one purpose – ‘extra long prayer’. How cool is that?

And as if that wasn’t enough, in the same aisle, they had an array of successful fragrances. Quite clearly the message being, that you shouldn’t take chances on other brands… when you could use proven successful fragrance.

How the metrics for success in this matter are measured I’m unclear – but who doesn’t want to use a proven brand?

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This post is one of the most popular on the blog for reasons I’m not entirely clear on. You can find the posts I personally think are the bbest of the blog page. Why not hop over and check out some more foolishness there?

Or go straight to the good stuff here:

For internal use, Madam

I stood arguing with a man with one arm

The red dust of India

And please do add your own tales of foolish things found in supermarkets below. I love to know I’m not alone in finding them…