Things That Make India Great

Random facts we turn glorious.

By Team FHM · Aug 2012 · 9 min read

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WE DRINK… MORE THAN OTHERS

We drink more alcohol than anyone in the world. Everyone knows everything seems better when you are drunk. Assocham (those fellas in the boring suits and ties) say we are the world’s largest alcohol market and produce 70 percent of South East Asia’s alcohol. An average Indian bloke drinks 2.6 litres of pure alcohol a year compared to those lightweights in the rest of the region who bottom out at 2.2 litres and when we drink we don’t mean beer with less alcohol content than cough syrup. We drink the good stuff – only 12 percent is beer – the rest a healthy 88 percent comprises of whiskey, rum and vodka. Yup, the good stuff.

We CAN SMS

Like all truly great nations, almost 60 percent of our population has cellphones. And we all know progress comes only to the wireless.

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WE LIKE FRESH BREEZE, ON OUR BEHIND

626 million (53 percent of India) takes a dump in the open. The most in the world with a 586 million more than Pakistan and 612 million more than China. True you would talk about sanitation and all that, but also remember India also has the world’s largest network of railway lines. If the Indian masses moved all their action to the loos – the guys travelling by train would have nothing to do for entertainment.

WE HAVE BALLS

We wasted 77,000 tons of winter crop in Punjab and Haryana alone, while the Food Corporation of India lost another 3,400 tonnes of wheat and rice last year. And everyone knows you have to be rich to waste – especially when one third of the world’s hungry live in our country.

WE DON’T HAVE MONEY IN SWISS BANKS (AT LEAST NOT AS MUCH AS BRITS AND THE YANKS)

Anna Hazare might lose his voice screaming about black money in Swiss Banks and go on his bi-annual fasts against corruption – but we are not the ones keeping Swiss Banks afloat. We account for a mere 0.14 percent of the total foreign wealth deposited there amounting to just 2.18 billion Swiss Franks (there was a total of ₹90 trillion in Swiss Banks at the end of 2011). The British account for almost 20 percent, the Americans accounted for about 18 percent and there were 52 other nations who had more money than India in Swiss Banks. So there!

WE PUT SWITZERLAND ON THE MAP

Before Yash Chopra movies, they were just a country that made good chocolates and strictly okay watches besides lending their name to a folding knife.

WE GAVE THE BRITS GOOD FOOD

Before Chicken Tikka Masala and Naan Bread stepped in to save the day, those poor blokes were eating mashed potatoes on the side of phallic looking sausages and overall disgustingly smelly, bland food.

WE HAVE WON SOME FAIRLY MAJOR WARS

We beat those dastardly Pakistanis in 1947–48, 1965, 1971 and ’97 (Kargil War was also fought on the highest and toughest terrain). India’s other significant military victories was beating the Portuguese in 48 hours to liberate Goa – a victory all Indians traveling to Goa celebrate by being hopelessly drunk as soon as we get off the flight – and Hyderabad which gave us Mohd Azharuddin, biryani and then recently, a tennis star called Sania Mirza who plays sparing tennis.

WE HAVE 150,000 POST OFFICES

The most anywhere in the world, and they work hard to ensure all letters arrive consistently two weeks late.

OUR RICH HERITAGE OF PRODUCTION AND EXPORT

WE MIGHT USE RAJMA IN BAKED BEANS INSTEAD OF LIMA BEANS, BUT WE ARE THE WORLD’S LARGEST PRODUCER OF DRIED BEANS.

WE PRODUCE MORE AND BETTER TEA THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD

To reinforce this fact we export most of it.

OUR MANGOES ARE KICK ASS

Alfonso. We then export all of it and import it to eat them.

FILTER COFFEE IS BETTER THAN CAPPUCCINO

Plus only Brazil and Vietnam export more coffee than us.

WE ARE THE WORLD’S LARGEST MILK PRODUCING COUNTRY

And in a bid to constantly increase milk production, our government ensures our milk-able cattle is knocked up by high-quality imported semen from foreign bulls.

WE INVENTED CHESS

The Gupta dynasty used to play ‘Chaturanga’, which then spread to the world centuries later and became the game we know as Chess. Our chess supremacy is vindicated by Viswanathan Anand, who wins pretty much everything he plays.

LUDO

We called it ‘Pachisi’ and invented it in the 6th century. Akbar is said to have played a live version using girls from his harem, though it’s unclear what he used as dice. It was then stolen by the British and introduced as Ludo.

SNAKES AND LADDERS

Like all things Indian and great – Snakes and Ladders was based on morality. The Brits stole it from us before Milton Bradley introduced it in America in 1943.

KABADDI IS INDIAN

And we live in hope that one day it will become an Olympic sport and we will win all the medals – or at least till the Chinese learn to play it.

WE COULD BUY ICC, IF WE WANTED

70 percent of the global cricket revenues come from India. We also gave the ICC a meagre ₹450 crore tax donation on the money they earned from the 2011 World Cup. We just don’t want to buy it.

WE GIVE WORK TO RETIRED AUSSIE CRICKETERS

Shane Warne, Brett Lee, Adam Gilchrist, Mathew Haydon, the fella who was abused by Harbhajan Singh – Symonds or something. We make sure they all earn their bread and butter.

IPL OFFERS A BIGGER PAYDAY THAN EPL

EPL might offer more prize money – $18 million for the nine-month long series, but the IPL happens twice a year and a quick round of hypothetical math would make you realise its $1 million a month compared to EPL’s $2 million a month is not bad for a five-year-old tournament.).

SACHIN TENDULKAR IS INDIAN

And he plays better cricket than God.

MAGGI IS AS INDIAN AS BHINDI

We eat more Maggi than anyone else in the world. We have also created recipes around it with about a 100 different sauces. When Nestle tried to re-brand the product in the mid-90s, it received backlash similar to Mihir’s death in Kyunki….

VADA PAO AND SAMOSA ARE MORE POPULAR THAN McDONALDS

Ronald can take his burger and stick it in the deep end. While McDonalds sells an average of 47 Million burgers a day across the world, almost 2 million vada pao’s are eaten in Mumbai and Thane alone. Add the rest of Maharashtra to this and then add all the fat blokes up North munching on samosas and you’d know just why we said what we did.

CAFE COFFEE DAY: BIGGER THAN LAVAZZA

CCD outnumbers Barista in India five to one. With 1174 outlets end of last year and plans to add about 900 more – you might bitch about the quality of the coffee, but there is a Cafe Coffee Day on more street corners than you can count.

WE HAVE BETTER PIZZA TOPPINGS THAN THE ITALIANS

Paneer Tikka, Full Punjabi, Butter Chicken, Jain Pizza, Keema Do Pyaaza, Kadhai Paneer, Tangy Tadka… We put practically everything on a pizza. And those cursed Italians still swear by their raw ham pizzas… Hah! Also Nirula’s makes better burnt pizzas than Domino’s any day of the week.

OUR ACTORS ARE GOING TO HOLLYWOOD AND TAKING OVER ALL THE TWO BIT ROLES

Anil Kapoor in Mission Impossible 4, Irrfan Khan in the Spiderman reboot, Freida Pinto in every movie she’s been in, Amitabh Bachchan in The Great Gatsby, Naseeruddin Shah in The League of Extraordinary Gents, Kabir Bedi in Octopussy, Aishwarya Rai in The Pink Panther… There is an Indian in every two-bit role in Hollywood. Oh and Bipasha Basu is all set to debut in Singularity, while others are getting set to leap frog across oceans too.

MALLIKA SHERAWAT IS INDIAN

And she seems all set to ruin Antonio Banderas’s wedding.

OUR ACTORS ARE FUNNIER IN AMERICAN COMEDIES THAN AMERICANS

You had to live under a rock to not know that Kal Penn was the funniest part of the Harold and Kumar series; also he was retained for Van Wilder Part 2, while a bloke called Ryan Reynolds was given the boot. Although Kunal Nayyar (Rajesh Koothrappali) in The Big Bang Theory isn’t drop dead hilarious and it’s true he might not be funnier than Sheldon, but he’s definitely funnier than that Jewish dude. Plus, he is one of the two people on the show to hook up with Penny and is married to an ex-Miss India in his real life.

BUTTONS ARE BETTER THAN ZIPPERS

The lads of the Indus Valley Civilization were making buttons carved into geometric shapes with holes into them attached to clothing using a thread way before anyone thought of it. Try doing up your shirt without a button and you’d know just how important it is for you.

CRUCIBLE STEEL

The blokes down South were producing high-quality steel using high-purity wrought iron as well as charcoal and glass long before it made its way anywhere else.

WE INVENTED IRON-CASED ROCKET ARTILLERY

Tipu Sultan developed rockets capable of hitting targets upto 2 kms away and used it against the Brits in 1780. Tragically, he lost the war and the British stole the technology and used it in the Napoleonic wars.

STIRRUPS

India has a glorious tradition dedicated to keeping people astride galloping horses – the first known form of a stirrup was made in India that wrapped around the rider’s big toe – though we can’t really imagine it being painless.

RAJNIKANTH IS INDIAN

And he gets paid more money than Jackie Chan.

WE LOVE GODS

All 330 Million of them. More than anywhere else in the world.

PETA LOVES INDIA

We might have killed the tigers, but over 475 million vegetarian people in India are the reason why PETA has a big plastic smile on its face. India has the most vegetarians in the world. We’d say they are wasting their lives, but anyway.

WE FIRST FARMED COTTON

The Indus Valley Civilization apart from inventing the ruler a century later, were also the ones who first started growing and cultivating cotton, even while those Greeks were running around in armoured leather skirts.

AMERICAN PORN INDUSTRY LOVES US

And not because of our dark candy complexion, Indians are the reason why breasts can be supersized and faces restricted. Turns out Indians were practicing forms of plastic surgery as early as 2000 BCE.

THE MEN OF THE WORLD HATE US

Diamonds – the scourge of male wallets were first mined in India. India remained the world’s largest and possibly, only source of diamonds till those Brazilians entered the fray in the 18th century.

OUR LAD’S ARE IT SUPERKIDS

Maybe it has to do with the fact that we invented the ‘zero’ and wanted to take forward the proud legacy or NIIT – Indians pretty much call all the shots in Silicon Valley till the time its recession and we are pink-slipped. Sabeer Bhatia is also Indian and now there is a beeline of FB staffers looking to buy out Indian start-ups.