We are back, gentle reader, but that is not the plague eating away at the soul of Brownistan. Indeed, on the whole, we are more browned against than browning. The plague, on the other hand, is as dangerous to Brownistan as Brownistan is dangerous to us. Or to recycle notation used earlier on these pages:
Plague : Brownistan :: Brownistan : Us.
But do not fret, dear reader. We have not forgotten that you have the brains of Lord Hanuman's illegetimate offspring. We will not just state the obvious. We will belabor it, just like old times.
Now, we were talking about the p. eating away at the s. of Brownistan. We are not referring to inflation, nor are we referring to the irrational bickering among virtually identical Hindi-speaking brown people in the name of Allah miya and Ram bhaiya. And before you mention it, while we do resent the Brownistanis' new-found riches and their bourgeois posturing and their tiresome jetsetting and stock-trading and gadget-flashing, it does not break our heart. We expected no better from a nation ruled by firenginis and their minion sardars. Nay, 'tis not the malls that galls, for at least, the malls are full of molls.
These are mere skin infections. The real plague, alas, is a festering gash, one so deep as to have reached the remote town of T~. T~ was once a bastion of Brownistan's hoary purity, and so too it seemed to us when we set foot on it this time. After all, the hireling posted outside the parental home still did bow to us. He was ancient and looked suitably poor and obsequious. We were pleased.
We settled in, and were just diving into the sambar trough, when in walked the neighbor. Like all Indians, she made small talk, enquiring about our salary, the cost of underwear in Gawd-bless-amaizhica, and whether little Johny was expected to bring forth results anytime soon. We were briefly flummoxed, but decided to answer inquisition with enquiry.
We bowled a loosener, asking about the lady's profession. We expected her to say she stayed at home, cooked, cleaned and made a few lakhs on the stock market every day. (Brownistani currency, we had noticed on arrival, was used by the natives as langot material, and as a means to identify and ridicule returning natives. The minion at the airport insisted on taking a photo with us on his cellphone after we offered him ten rupeees for tea. We had also learned, by cleverly mingling with the natives, that the stock market was the new ladies' club, and that the New Brown woman makes cash just as easily as she makes babies.)
"I'm a doctor", quoth she, causing us to frown. We decided to play along, asking her if it was true chickenguniya could spread by email. "I do not know," said she without irony, "I specialize in critical and terminal care. My husband and I run a 100-bed clinic, and we just opened up 30 more". At which point, she looked longingly at the pater and the mater, they having reached the age when white people get married, and brown people get hospitalized.
But we digress. It must be the shock, for you see, beloved reader, this nosy woman deep in the backwaters of Brownistan, had indeed used the words "critical and terminal care". The implications were not lost on our brilliant deductive mind., namely that (i) the Brownistani doctor was no longer just a severe-looking man who gave you malaria pills and prescribed rasam rice, and (ii) Brownistanis had contracted the silly Western habit of wrestling pootta case oldies from Yama for no reason at all,and were even paying cash to do so.
But we weren't to be put off by just one mortal blow. Nay, we are the Andy Roddick of everyday life, constantly uppity in the face of utter humiliation.
We persisted in our questioning. "And what does your husband specialize in?" we asked. "Malaria" was the right answer, but the shameless virago proudly proclaimed, "Test tube babies! T~ is the district capital in the procedure", This time, she looked acquisitively at us, our inability to deliver already having been discussed.
But by then, we were too shocked to feel insulted.
The horror! The horror! 'Tis ghastly, but true. A virile nation which once ridiculed white master's inability to multiply without technological props can no longer throw stones, for it breeds in glass houses. Aye, the new Brownistani may lord it over the world; he may amass his millions and drink two single teas a day, just because he can; he may buy touchscreen phones and flatscreen TVs; he may throw away money on his parents. He may even have girlfriends, but alas, he fires blanks at them.
What went wrong where? The brownistani supremacists claim that in keeping with Brownistan's superpower status, breeding has been outsourced to even poorer nations on some faraway planet. The brownistani doomsdayers see this as yet another failure of the domestic manufacturing sector. The local moralists say moolah necessarily brings with it impotence, even to the most fertile of people. Behavioral psychologists blame it on television and the internet, which have shown the Brownistanis that their mates are just nature's cruel joke on them. The pious point out that the Brownistani breeding has always depended on God's grace, and God just does not grace Brownistani julabulajungs any more. The scientific alarmists claim insecticides make Brownistani's eggs brittle and prevent them from hatching in their dozens.
We do not know the truth, gentle reader. All we know is a neighbor who hawks beds to our parents and babies to us.
