India, March 16 -- On a chilly morning inside the original Tabasco factory in Avery Island (Louisiana), my head was getting addled with drop-mathematics. The air was thick with the whiff of pungent chilli (think 30,000-50,000 on the Scoville scale) and I stood there staring at hundreds of two-ounce cologne-type bottles with sprinkler fitments hurtling down the bottling belts like obedient soldiers wearing their signature red cap and diamond-shaped label neatly. The digital clock read: 120,712 bottles produced. Each two-ounce Tabasco bottle has 720 drops of world's favourite sauce. That's 869,12,640 drops bottled by noon. If I had stood there until the sirens hooted to mark the end of the working day, the calculator would have conked off. ...