Some bad news

Hello my fellow Indians from the US, the UK and everywhere else around the world except India. It is never a pleasant experience for anyone to be the purveyor of bad news but today I will regretfully don that mantle for the common good. My friends, listen up and please sit down or stand up depending on whether you are in the habit of suddenly sitting down or standing up when you hear really bad news.

Here is the bad news. India has, or soon will, stop exporting dal to the United States. I hear a collective gasp of horror from myself which drowned out the gasp I am sure simultaneously issued forth from your frozen lips. Yes it is true. India will no longer export any more dal to the US until March 2007. That is about 7 months from now. Sadly I did not hear a gasp of horror from my American audience. In order to elicit that gasp, I will elaborate upon the extraordinary nature of the news I just conveyed.

Imagine, dear American reader, if, someday, suddenly all the cows in America were to disappear, lets say, through alien abduction, along with all the burger buns wrapped around them. Not only that, let us imagine a scenario where ketchup, mustard and french fries were to suffer from a severe shortage due to a late monsoon playing havoc with the ketchup and mustard crops and France, finally having had enough of Bill O'Reilly's hissy-fits, refusing to ship their fries to the US. And finally, imagine if all the chickens in the country were to be afflicted by sinus infections, thus rendering them unsuitable for consumption and fornication. (Note that I purposely didn't say bird flu because I did not want to raise the terror alert level and make you want to go out there and invade China's bird population)

How, pray shuddering American, would you react to such a situation? Yes, that is right, you would be aghast, fearing for the future, wondering how to feed your pets and your family. Because that is the exact equivalent of the perplexing bind the average Indian in the US now finds himself in.

Yes, dal is the Indian's ground beef and chicken cordon bleu, all in one. It is a good source of protein. It is quick to cook, fills the belly and helps you in maintaining a spotless colon. Which is why every Indian will take this news of a dal shortage very seriously.

But all is not lost, friend Indian. It is not time to panic yet. Listen up and stop weeping. Go to your neighbourhood Indian store. It is still selling toor dal, only now it is called "toovar" for some reason, probably something to do with the export ban. The price is higher now, it costs about 4 and a half dollars for a packet small enough to fit comfortably inside your spotless colon, not that I am trying to give you any ideas. I don't know how much it used to cost before but I assume it was much cheaper than that. It is a fact of life that one only begins to notice the price of things after they become pricey. So anyways, my point is, go to your Indian store and snap up all the dal you can find. Oh do not worry about your fellow Indians. They will eat cake.

There is but one problem. Dal Eaters Against Stockpiling and Price Gouging (DEASPG) has ordered all Indian groceries not to dispense more than two bags of dal per person. So by the time you finish reading this and head off to the Indian store, it is imperative that you raise a decent sized Indian family. And then, look for all the Indian stores within a 50 mile radius and make the rounds with each family member going into each store in turn to receive his or her allotted ration of dal. Take a pickup truck. Remember, March is a long way off. In between there is Thanksgiving and turkey stuffed with dal, Christmas with the dalnog and boy, let's not forget the Superbowl dal shots. Halftime this year will be tinged with sadness. There will be rice, but where, oh where will be the dal?

I guess the only solace one can find during this troubling time is in the fact that one's car runs on gasoline and not dal.