When we think of Diwali, we naively think of lamps, new clothes, new bartans, jewellery, crackers and bombs. What only the wise remember is that Diwali every year brings along milawati days too.
Sweetshops owners and food inspectors rise from their slumber to have their heyday. The food inspectors become the new superheroes swooping on adulterated mithai. They are like men on a mission declaring what is fit and what’s not fit to eat.
But the ‘aam aadmi’ is cleverer. We cannot wait for somebody to come in the last moment to rescue us. So what we do is to slowly build up our resistance all year to adulteration. So stumbling through a couple of food poisonings, intestinal cramps and stomach disorders we get our ‘hazma pucca”. So food inspector waale bhai, aap fikr na karein. We’ll survive Diwali too.
We are so pliant that we do not want to trouble the food inspectors, neither the government. So we’ve stopped asking stupid questions like, ‘what’s the government doing on this?” We could at least ask them to test the adulterated samples on rats and monkeys, but then I guess PETA and PFA will be unnecessarily overworked demonstrating.
The organic food industry is trying to take the steam out of the adulteration demon, but then in India who knows what is being sold off as organic is authentic? So instead of trying to change the system, change yourself. Instead of wasting your time trying to hunt and feed your child with ‘pure’ foods, try building up your kids’ immunity instead. If your child can consume and digest synthetic milk with ease, then he has a bright future as an Indian. After all, it’s not a mean feat to stomach water, detergent, sodium hydroxide, vegetable oil; salt and urea in one go.
Adulteration, like corruption is here to stay!
A foreigner once asked my friend, ‘I hear you have high levels of food adulteration in your country. Especially the sweets you consume. Don’t you fall sick having such foods and sweets?’ My friend said, ‘we do fall sick, but our Indian medicines really cure us fast.’ He said, ‘Why only Indian medicines?’ My friend said, ‘because they are equally spurious.’
ROTFL and wishing everyone a Happy and a Safe Diwali!!!
