Table For One : Edition 6.

5 min readMay 13, 2020

India is a land of a million sadhus, a million religions, a million gods & of course a million places of worship. But nothing comes close to the magnitude of the worlds richest temple trust : Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) which runs the Sri Venkateswara Swamy Temple in Tirupati.

It’s claimed on an average Rs 3 Crores is collected from cash donations, handi collections at the temple etc on a daily basis. This does not account the gold donations which people leave behind because how else can the super rich evade an Income tax raid.

Anyways, the trust was in news recently because they announced the lockdown cost them close to Rs 400 Cr loss in revenue while they continued to pay a total sum of Rs 300 Cr towards wages, pensions, maintenance work amongst other fixed expenses during the lockdown period. Outcome was, the trust claimed they did not have any money left to continue paying the wages because supposedly they don’t have enough funds left.
(Corona Virus 1 : God 0)

So at present there are close to 21,000 employees who will have to face the thought of “I should not have donated all that money”. Now even if there are 21,000 people working (few of them are contractual too who were released earlier), I really doubt Rs 300 Crores being the wage bill of a temple trust. (Corruption 1 : God 0)

Now the other fun fact is the trust sits on a sum of Rs 14,000 Cr in FD and over 8 tonnes of gold deposits, but the trust won’t be touching it because “Gods might go crazy”

Not related, but do watch this fun movie.

Overall the trust does do a look of good work, free food through the year, runs hospitals, gives out loans, has a few temples under the trust but nevertheless the worlds richest trust running out of money due to lack of revenue for a few months ? Someone get them an auditor pls. Oh also another fun fact the trust doesn’t pay any Income tax. (God 1 : Income tax 0)

I was in Class Five when it was decided it was time for the kids in the family to get their heads shaved. So we decided to go to Tirupati. I was aware even back then that we were visiting the richest temple in the world. Half a day later, we were a few meters away from the main temple when both the brother and myself were handed a grand sum of Rs 500 each which was meant to be donated into the handi. So when we finally did make an appearance in front of the gods (lasted 5 seconds), we were pushed towards the handi. This is where I took the first major decision of my life, I pushed my hand into the handi and pretended to ‘donate’ while carefully putting the money back into my tiny pocket. I sneaked the “savings” back home and spent good 50 odd days at various bakeries in Bangalore. Btw Bangalore bakeries were the bomb back in the days.(God 0 : Bakeries 1).

So if there ever comes a choice of donating to religious organisation, always look at what materialistic commodity is lacking in your life or look at donating to towards the poor or just head towards a Bangalore based bakery (Iyengars) for best feels.

So today I decided to cook up some Chicken Wings. Now I haven’t ever cooked wings before, so I dived in with tons of hope and zero belief. Let’s see how it went.

Step 1 : Salty
Dandi march happened for a reason, so don’t shy away from being generous with that salt while marinating the chicken. Note: Don’t make it so salty, that it ends up reminding you of your ex. Add pepper because the salt n pepper look is in trend now. Let it rest for an hour.

Step Do : Whiten

Now add a bowl of maida and half a bowl of rice flour and let them dance.

Step teen : Fry it up

Pour some oil and let it fry till they turn golden brown.

Step Char : Prep the sauce

Some butter, chilli sauce, ketchup, salt, sugar, pepper, vinegar, soya sauce & finely cut garlic are all made to meet over some pre heated vessel. Now let them play around just for a bit before you toss in the wings