Gaurav Kode, a student at Kasturba Medical College, Manipal has just come out with a startling piece of information. He has claimed to not have lost his umbrella during the three weeks of Monsoon this year.
This in Manipal, where Umbrellas are lost in the blink of the eye, especially during the rainy season that lasts from June to October and sometimes beyond that. The national game of Manipal, is named after this particular process. Mr. Kode has claimed that this is the first time in 3 years he’s stayed at Manipal, that he hasn’t needed to buy an umbrella every week (further prodding he changed that to “borrowing” a new umbrella every week).
There have been reports from other students that people are not playing the Umbrella exchange game this year with the same gusto like the earlier years.
Meanwhile, Umbrella sales have taken a hit this year.
The store keeper at a major Manipal Store near tiger circle confirmed the same when we enquired about it. However, he refused to blame the poor monsoons for the fall in umbrella sales. He said that even during summer, they have sold more umbrellas this year.
In earlier years, the pre-monsoon months were marked by the high-decibel innovative advertisements of new umbrella products, mainly for schoolkids, rolled out by competing companies. But this time, Mr. Modi paid the media to carry his own advertisements and in that process we lost out.
He said, “Each year, rain or no rain, we used to sell a lot of umbrellas. However, this year, students have become smart. They’ve read and listened to news and weather reports. This interest in news was generated by one man – the current PM of India. If it weren’t for Mr. Modi, students would have carried umbrellas to the library, thinking that it would rain.”
Another shopkeeper in Udupi added, we used to sell umbrellas to students in Manipal, because of some game they used to play, called the umbrella exchange. This year they are following the world cup football in the comforts of their homes. That is the main reason we’ve lost business.
Whatever the reason, If this trend holds, Umbrellas may be a thing of the past in Rainy Manipal!
P.S. The facts mentioned in this article are fictitious. But you already know that. Didn’t you?
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