The Towel...

There are many examples and stories related to towels, but none can be as compelling and eye-opening as the following quote:

“A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] 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 vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft 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 avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); 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.”

― Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

This small (!) quote truly summarizes everything there is to be said about the most ignored but the most important item in our cupboards, the towel. This quote shows that a towel is probably the most important item in all of galaxy, and yet only a few people have been able to understand its importance.

One of them, is most definitely a recent player (if he can be so called, considering the fact that he defiled the sanctity of the game he played, more specifically the Gentleman’s game) and he can be compared, in terms of his knowledge about the towel, to Ford Prefect, the semi-protagonist of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the person, entrusted with the duty of filling in the pages of the guide. This player, must have gotten his hands on one such guide or he must be Prefect, in disguise, for no one before him had ever understood the importance of the towel.

Another person is a certain individual, whose sole purpose of existence is to carry his father’s family name forward. This man was apparently the Zaphod Beeblebrox of our story, for Prefect had waited long for him to arrive.

But, the moolah right now is being raked in by the towel manufacturers, who till date lived a life of anonymity and are now the superstars of the era! They suddenly have offers to create towels which are exact replicas of the ones used by the said player. People, though angry, want to cash in on this occasion by bringing in a few memorabilia and the only people in demand are, well, the towel makers!!

But jokes aside, the recent exposures have seriously dented the trust people reposed on a section of people and they too now want to “throw the towel” in and get it over with. And as a person amongst the crowd of dissatisfied onlookers, I too believe it’s time to get our towels out and cover our faces in shame, for the list might be even longer…