The Monk and The Red Bull

World is a funny place.

I was in a mall recently.

Now before I write further, just so you know, I don't go to malls too often. In fact, it's a monthly visit to the mall to check the new books in the book store and maybe look at some people. There are lot of people in malls these days. I guess there always were a lot of people in malls and there will be more in future.

There are lot of shops in the mall and many of these shops have very very expensive things. There are oxygen bars where you can pay money to breathe in oxygen through tubes that are inserted into your nose. And you thought air would always be free? Ha! There are small pools for some kind of foot treatment where little fish nibble the dead skin off your feet. There are chairs where people sit and other people rub their feet, for a payment. I find that thing particularly strange, paying another human being to rub your feet. Of course, anyone can give me an argument that it's a job too, but that won't change me feeling strange about it. I'd never do it for the life of me.

I have digressed.

Again.

I was in a mall recently.

There, I saw a monk drinking a Red Bull, which is an energy drink, in case some of the readers are not in the know of that. And the monk was talking on an N97 cell phone. A can of Red Bull costs 75 Rs and an N97 phone from Nokia costs upwards of Rs 30,000. What a monk was doing in possession of such a cellphone is beyond my guesswork and it's not something that I should be bothered about. But I have a soft spot for monks in my heart. These people give up a lot to live a simple life, meditating and trying to find god, and other cool things that monks do, maybe doing Kung-Fu to bandits in the hills of Himalayas. Just saying. I am not a know-it-all.

It was disconcerting to see the monk drinking Red Bull. Just that.

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P.S-- If this was any other blog, I'd have written something of general interest, but the fact that you bothered to click the link or type in www.pallavsehgal.com in the address bar of your browser and hit enter, I can safely think that you have some kind of interest in reading what I am writing.

Hello, in that case.