Harmless Armless Vishnu

If I ever wished to convert to the wonderful and colourful religion of Hindu, my devout Christian mother wouldn't be too happy. I have the right to believe in anything I wish, but I still don't want to upset my mum. If she walked into the front room and saw my new Vishnu shrine sitting proudly on the mantelpiece, she would probably cry. I need to break the news gently.

I propose that a model Vishnu be carved, whose arms can be removed. Your mother would enter the room one day and see some non-descript Arabian looking gentleman – actually just an ornamental Vishnu with no arms - sitting cross-legged, deep in conversation with a porcelain Staffordshire Dog. She’d think nothing of it. But on the first day of every month, when she’s not looking, you would sneak an arm into one of the slots on the side of Vishnu’s body. This whole thing works on the same principal as the old garden-stealing routine, in which you shift your garden fence a little bit each week so as to eventually claim your next-door neighbour’s entire garden without them knowing about it.

There are different ways you could go about it. Maybe you’ll add a new arm every month. Or maybe you’ll put all the arms in at once, push them in to his body so that only the tips of his fingers show, and then pull them out a few centimetres every week. This way, the news of your religious conversion will be broken to your mother in a way she can handle.