Towel truths

Towel truths

I love towels - soft, fluffy,nice smelling towels. If they have a nice colour and prints even better.
I think the room rent in expensive hotels is completely justified just for the nice towels they stock. After all they must care a lot for the guest if they took such care with their towels and stocked them in different sizes, all clean and nicely folded. On checking in, some people check the view, some see if the aircon and TV work fine but I check the towels.If they are there, the more the better, and clean I fell comfortable and happy. Having a towel monogrammed with your initials - an ultimate sign that you have arrived. Burying your face in a thick fluffy towel smelling of detergent and warm from Sun drying - oh, Nirvana of sorts!

The pleasure of a nice warm bath can be completely ruined if the towel that comes at the end is not perfect - if it is damp or rough or too small. Or if it is the plain cotton functional towel that gets completely soaked with one rub leaving you totally cold. They are alright for wrapping around wet hair but not for the body. I keep a towel or two handy in my box just in case. I dont know much about the history of Turkey but I want to visit the place because I think the people who invented the turkish towels must have a great civilisation.

Whenever I am in big supermarkets in India or anywhere, the towels section is the one where you can find me. I can claim to have checked out the towels in about 12 countries around the world. In case this seems bizarre to any of you and if you are probably one of those who consider Them "just Towels", which are nothing but a piece of cloth to dry, I feel nothing but pity for you. I direct you to the following passage on the uses of a towel by my favorite writer Douglas Adams. Perhaps that might help dispel your ignorance and make you appreciate their value better!

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an Interstellar Hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value—you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you—daft as a brush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag [non-hitch hiker] discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have 'lost'. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with."
(Douglas Adams.The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

On the day when the spaceship comes I will be ready to wave it down and hitch a ride as well as handle the perils during an intergalactic trip with my specially chosen towel. Will you be?

P.s: did you know that there is a day devoted for Towels - the Towel day? yes, and it is the 25th of May!