I. Mahmud of Ghazni's Invasion: As the millennium barely commenced, he was the first of the foreign invaders to cast his beady eyes upon India. Though this Turk looted and scooted, his primary objective in dropping in uninvited was quite different. What he wanted was elephants, yes, war elephants. In the event, he left behind a jumbo problem, starting a procession of invaders lining for Indian goodies.

2. Christopher Columbus' Idiocy: Even as every invader found his way to India without much trouble, this Genovese navigator fooled Queen Isabella of Spain into funding an expedition to the Indies. He took a wrong turn, landed up in San Salvador, went to Cuba and thought the natives were the Japanese. He is still revered as a great explorer! Also credited with the discovery of America; proving that the mistaken enthusiasm of the Yanks is an anthropologically sound trait.

3. The Arrival of Babar: Another one who came to India by default. He became the ruler of Farghana (Uzbekistan) in 1494, captured Samarkand, conquered Kabul and thereafter, lost all that territory. So, he opted for what was then the simplest recourse for an angstsy, antsy monarch wannabe without a realm. He humiliated Ibrahim Lodhi, established the Mughal dynasty and left behind a legacy that still spawns riots, inside and outside Parliament.

4. Akbar The Grate: The enlightened monarch, one of the original Babar ka aulad, provides the first instance of what our saffron sanghis would describe as pseudo-secularism. In forming the din-e-elahi, a catchall religion, he omitted minor details like actually making it applicable to common life. Of this fuzziness is born a history of socialist rhetoric that excels in vagueness. At least he also championed Birbal, proving that misguided regimes give fertile material for humorists.

5. The East India Company Does Its Business: Perhaps the world's first recorded instance of a hostile takeover. Its greatest achievement was to rid India of the French. The Company, as all good MNCs do, raped and ravaged the land and then savaged some more. By the time it was dissolved in 1769, India had been well and truly Union jacked.

6. Willow Power: If the British can be blamed for stripping India of its resources, the introduction of cricket is probably worse. Their introduction of this game in cantonments and garrisons, and its subsequent adoption by the brown sahibs in Holkar or Bombay or Madras, has led to our nation being catapulted into periodic bouts of collective depression. It also gives our workforce an excuse to get so laidback as to be virtually horizontal.

7. The Mahatma: Thrown out of a train in South Africa, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi exchanged a Saville Row suit for a loincloth and brought about a peaceful revolution. Fortunately for him, he was assassinated soon after India attained Independence. Otherwise, he may have exclaimed "Hai Ram" instead of "Hey Ram".

8. The Partition: Nothing remotely funny about this event. But what remains enduringly bewildering was the British Raj's ability to divide the country in so farcical a manner that while a man's home may have been in India, his toilet was in Pakistan and he would require a visa each time nature called.

9. Nehru Becomes The Prime Minister: India's first PM was an idealist, an unfortunate misfit in global realpolitik. He was one who wanted to remain nonaligned in a bipolar world. However, his undying gifts to the nation have been a vicious dispute over his home State, Kashmir; a brand of socialism that went obsolete before it was implemented; and a dynasty, quite a downer for a staunch democrat.

10. The Emergency: By getting Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to sign on the dotted line, not only did Indira Gandhi prove herself "chicken" when it cam to facing the law, she also sowed the seeds that have sprouted into the ever-branching Janata Parivar. Her cynical manipulation of the system is also the foundation to the political ideology (if that is not too strong a word) that prevails today.