THE other night, I watched a movie where a spy was ­machine-gunned, thrown out of an aircraft and dropped into a tank of piranhas.

I felt sorry for the guy. His life was so dull.

No, I mean it. James Bond is completely ­incapable of ­forming emotional ­attachments, which means he cannot know what real pain is.

In contrast, your days and my days contain the biggest challenge that any human ­being can face.

I am referring, of course, to Family Life.

Sometimes I have three heart attacks in a single day because my children take turns getting lost at airports.

Sometimes I get locked out of the house all night because Granny forgets who I am and bolts the front door.

Sometimes I get no sleep for days because all my ­dependants – children, granny and hamsters – ­organise their visits to death’s door in ­consecutive all-night relays.

(“Your turn to have a ­temperature of 103,” they whisper to each other as dusk falls.)

My mate Suresh Singh of Madhya Pradesh in Indian has it worse. He was quietly minding his own business when his neighbour Devanki knocked on his door.

“I just had this really weird dream that the brains of your mother and father had been transplanted into the bodies of two snakes,” Devanki told Suresh.

But did Suresh laughingly ask Devanki what he was on and tell the guy to go detox? No, of course he didn’t.

This is Asia. Suresh took this nugget of information as indisputable ­scientific ­evidence about what had ­really happened to his ­parents. (They’d actually died in an ­accident several years earlier).
He promptly went out and adopted two snakes. He has since been treating them as a son treats his mother and father, newspapers reported.

I assume this means that he ignores everything they say and only comes home when he has laundry to be done!

Last week, a temple ceremony was held starring Suresh and his serpentine mum and dad.

Hundreds of people attended.

That is so typical of Asia. Humans suffer miserable existences and no one cares if they live or die.

But spread the word that they have been reincarnated as snakes or rats or divine potatoes, and ­everybody wants to know them.

Meanwhile in Malaysia, family love is causing funeral goods stores to stock up on flammable dentures during the Chinese All Soul’s Day.

It started when a guy realised that his late grandfather ­probably wasn’t enjoying heaven ­because he had no teeth. 

In fact, the old man had been cremated years ago, so was probably lacking quite a few things besides, er, teeth.

However, the dutiful son made false teeth to burn in a ceremony which would send them to heaven and started a fashion.

I can imagine the surprise at the angels’ internal mail distribution centre: ­“Incoming, one set of dentures. Any ­takers?”

In the US, people don’t pamper dead ancestors, but focus on relationships with live ones.

A few days ago, police in Indiana arrested a 19-year-old man for drunken driving.

They went to ask his father, the local coroner, to drive the car home. They found the old man drunk behind his ­steering wheel.

Father and son ended up in the same jail. That’s family togetherness, western-style.

I think the snake probably had better parenting skills.

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