Make Way for Towelheads

Douglas Adams’ intergalactic legacy lives on, celebrated every 25 May.

May 25 is the Independence Day of Jordan, the National Day of Argentina, and the National Tap Dance Day in the US. Since the last few years, it has also been Towel Day. The day when, from Turkey to Ecuador, Poland to Japan, fans of the late Douglas Adams’ five-part trilogy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2) celebrate his memory and the series by carrying towels around with them wherever they go, just as Adams’ hero Arthur Dent did.  

Why the towel? “A towel… is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have,” explained Adams. “Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.” 

In most other countries, from what I can make out, they just had a lot of beer, though Arthur Dent would have liked them actually to have a lot of tea. In Belgium they had beer, in Brazil they had beer, in Toronto, they pub-crawled, and in Ottawa, they partied at Zaphod Beeblebrox Club (Beeblebrox being, well, Beeblebrox; you’ll have to read H2G2 to get him). In Prague, people met to recite their self-composed Vogon poetry, the third worst poetry in the Universe. The only surviving example from H2G2: ‘Oh freddled gruntbuggly/thy micturations are to me/As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee./ Groop I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes. And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,/ Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don’t!’

In Backnang, Germany, Towel Day was celebrated with everyone with a towel getting peanuts free in a bar. At Budapest, a giant 42 (which is, as Adam’s fans know, the answer to the ultimate question about life, the universe and everything) was formed at Moszkva Ter. CERN, home to the Large Hadron Collider, will soon have a Building 42, so the CERN Bulletin wrote: ‘The fact that CERN’s latest building carries the number 42 has not escaped the attention of people both inside CERN and outside… So if you see unusually large numbers of people carrying their towels with them on 25 May, Don’t Panic, it’s only about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have!’  In the UK, by 9:30 in the morning,  @towelday was already the third most popular topic on Twitter. 

Well, we missed it in India this year. But I know enough H2G2 fans personally to take a shot at it next year, which will also be Adams’ 10th death anniversary. Is anyone game? 

About The Author

Sandipan Deb

Sandipan Deb is an IIT-IIM graduate who wandered into journalism after reading a quote from filmmaker George Lucas — “Everyone cage door is open” — and has stayed there (in journalism, not a cage) for the past 19 years. He has written a book on the IITs.