7 bizarre things that could happen only in India

Amma shining
Reliance may have its fingers in every pie from petrochemicals to retail, but it has a long way to go before hitting the Amma league. J. Jayalalithaa's welfare schemes and prostrate factories together birthed Amma pharmacies, salt, cinema halls, laptops, pens, canteens, water and school bags. Sales of Amma products surged after her acquittal earlier this year in the disproportionate assets case.
The only thing left on the horizon: Ammazon, an e-commerce website to give the floundering Make in India campaign a much-needed boost.

Knight in shining Enfield
One of India's 330 million gods and goddesses is a 350cc Royal Enfield Bullet. That's right: There's a Royal Enfield Bullet temple. What's intriguing is that devotees also offer alcohol at the shrine. Whatever happened to not drinking and driving?
This is the Om Banna shrine, located on the Pali-Jodhpur highway. Legend has it that Om Singh Rathore was travelling there one night in 1988 and died after his bike dashed into a tree. The bike was taken to the police station. But in the morning, it was back at the accident spot. Cops took it again, emptied the fuel tank, and locked it up. No matter how hard they tried, the bike wound up at the spot every time. When villagers got wind of it, they decided to make a shrine. "No driver passes by Om Banna shrine without paying respects. Sometimes, we stop the car, wait a few seconds, then drive away," says cabbie Bhan Singh. People even say accident victims have spoken of a man on a bike helping them to the nearest hospital while they were semi-conscious.

Bade dilwale
Last Saturday, a group of walkers in Anna University, Chennai, pooled money to fly R. Swathi, a poor student, to Coimbatore to attend pre-admission counselling at the agriculture university there. Swathi and her mother were asking for directions to Anna Arangam when morning walkers realised that the girl and her illiterate mother had mistaken Anna University for her destination more than 500 km away. According to a Facebook post by M. Saravanan, "One of the walkers informed that he would sponsor to send both of them by flight immediately to Coimbatore. Other walkers pitched in to inform the Registrar of the case." (sic.) The sponsor dropped them at the airport so they could board the 10.05am Coimbatore flight. The duo reached the University by 12.15 pm. where the girl has now got admission.

ID for Tommy
The "aam aadmi ka adhikaar" or India's biometric identity project has been the butt of jokes for issuing an Aadhaar number (no, it's not a card!) to non-humans. Just last month, police in Umri, Madhya Pradesh arrested a man after he put his dog's photo in the Aadhaar application. Soon enough, the mutt, Tommy Singh, 'son of Sheru Singh', was issued an Aadhaar number.
There's also the case of a Rajasthan man applying for Aadhaar as 'Lord Hanuman', son of 'Pawan ji'. And then, an instance where a photo of a chair, instead of the applicant's, was issued an Aadhaar number. While UIDAI, the Aadhaar issuing authority, has said that local operators (who collect Aadhaar applications and people's biometric data) are usually to blame, it is puzzling why it doesn't check photographs against the applicant's name and other details.

One on one free
This must hold the record for the most bizarre tragicomedy. In the early hours of May 26, 2010, a 45-year-old patient, Mahadev Upar died at the civic-run Sion hospital, Mumbai, after staff removed his life-support, mistaking him for another person who had passed away.
The staff removed the saline, nasal pipe and urine catheter of a semi-conscious Upar, mistaking him for Motiram Shelar, another patient on the adjacent bed, who had breathed his last a few hours before. An alcoholic Upar, who was suffering from liver malfunction, was taken to the mortuary instead of Shelar by a ward boy. The mistake was discovered a whole two hours later, and it was too late by then. Upar had breathed his last in the mortuary.
Police closed the case because Upar's daily wage-earning family refused to come to the police station daily and cooperate for the probe. An inquiry followed against three resident doctors, two nurses and two ward boys – one of the latter who had removed the life-support was suspended for a whole five weeks!

God(woman) of small things
Only in India can a satsang organiser turned godwoman turned alleged dowry pusher make mediapeople and self-styled jokesters look worse than herself. Sukhwinder Kaur may (rightly) be under the scanner, but so is the overall, blatant sexism in the focus on her miniskirts and make-up. Also befuddling is the insistence to keep calling her 'Radhe Maa'.
Wake up, smell the coffee, and let's go back to talking about her alleged charlatanism rather than her clothes, shall we?

Extended devotion
Remember the time everyone on Twitter had a go about a temple being erected for the prime minister? And how 'bhakts' dug out pictures of a cardboard temple dedicated to Sonia Gandhi? We Indians don't just nurture fandom. We build temples for those we are impressed by.
Besides Sonia and NaMo, there are temples for other public figures. Abhishekams are done on larger-than-life size posters of Rajinikanth. In Kolar, Karnataka, fans have a special Sahasra Lingam for him at Kotilingeshwara temple.
Fans in Tiruchirappalli have a temple with Southern siren Khushboo's idol in it. Meanwhile, Amitabh Bachchan fans in Kolkata built a temple for him with an idol of the superstar wearing the sandals he wore in Agneepath and the chair he sat on in Aks.
In Bihar's Atarwalia village, where there are no motorable roads, actor Manoj Tiwari built a temple for Sachin Tendulkar in a 15,000sq.ft. area. Unsurprisingly, there's a temple for Mahatma Gandhi too. In Bhatra village, Orissa, there's a temple of Gandhiji sitting under a tricolour.