advice column

I'm going to put this post on the sidebar (look! over there!) so anyone who wishes to give me India-related advice or share India-related stories can do so in an organized sort of way.

Today my friend Jenny, who has traveled all over, including India and multiple long-term stays in Indonesia, told me "Be sure not to drop your glasses down the toilet on a train." Someone she was traveling with in India did this, and it was bad indeed, requiring, for reasons that are unclear to me, going all the way to Delhi from somewhere not conveniently near Delhi to replace them.

I am very fond of this advice because it is cumulative - it just gets better and better as it goes along. Let's break it down:

• "Be sure not to drop [x noun]" is good advice. Dropping things often leads to breakage and/or hazardous shards and/or sadness.
• "Be sure not to drop your glasses" is very good advice, because you probably need them to see, and if you drop them you can't use them for seeing. Plus if you really, really need them to see, like I do, dropping them also means you can't see well enough to find them.
• "Be sure not to drop your glasses down the toilet" is universally true, I think, no matter the state or location of the toilet. Dropping anything down the toilet is probably bad.
• "Be sure not to drop your glasses down the toilet on a train" is better still, as train toilets involve lurchy motion at the least and are open holes at the worst, sending your glasses skittering down the tracks.