Land of Milk & Honey

Land of Milk & Honey

Not all people, we must admit, are waiting with breath for the achhe din, some as we saw last week are already in the achhe din zone; a few others are already salivating at the prospect of a clear indication that achhe din are but a daybreak away.

Take the case of Ram Prasad Yadav, a Class X student studying in Patna. He is sure that achhe din have arrived. His father has promised him a brand new motorcycle of his choice, if he manages to pass his board exams which are coming up in a couple of months.  You might be tempted to question why Ram Prasad Yadav, an extremely mediocre student who can barely write his own name either in English or Hindi, is so certain about passing his board exams. But then you don’t know Bihar, do you? He has already made jugaad that he will get all the right answers duly supplied to him in the required answer books right through the window of his examination hall, leaving him the onerous task of substituting the answer books. You must be thinking that his father must be very well off to afford such jugaad and the ensuing prize.  Well, think again; he is just a constable in the police force but then with (part) prohibition coming up as promised by Mahagatbandhan it is time for achhe din to arrive with a bang at least for the Yadav family and many more who find themselves in a spot as sweet as he does.

Take the case of Pascal, no friend of mine, but I am sure you would know a Pascal somewhere around you wherever you are. A very enterprising guy who is in the business of upliftment of people’s spirits by, you guessed it, providing them with “spiritual” assistance. True to the honoured tradition of “simple thinking and high living” he has made it his  vocation to help simple people achieve ‘high’ in life which they can otherwise only  dream of.  Of course Pascal has never worried about such mundane things like licenses and taxes etc, but he has always prided himself on the quality of his products. He is now planning to take a trip to Bihar to scout around for suitable joint venture partners who can brew the stuff as per his tried and tested recipes. His elder son Paolo is already looking after the Gujarat franchise and now he has the opportunity to settle his second son Anton in Bihar. What more achhe din can one expect!!!

But then achhe din for some can become burey din for others. Check it out with the liquor shop guys. They feel that life has brought them down by a peg or two. Some of them even felt that they have been properly quartered. The promised achhe din seem to have evaporated into thin air, rather like the contents of their stock-in-trade. So they approached the ‘gubermint’ to sort out the matter. End result was that the liquor shops will now be allowed to sell milk. While this opens up new pastures for dairy industry, the liquor shop owners are sure relieved that they have not been entirely put to grass by Mahagatbandhan.  

One doesn’t know the precise reason for this milk policy, but some may argue that that it has been dictated by the second-in-command in the state cabinet who is probably still sporting his milk-teeth. Or maybe this is a way to get rid of loads and loads of fodder which must still be in the godowns of the first family of Bihar - a legacy of the fodder scam.

My friend Guy Wise, who is also an ardent devotee of Bacchus, feels this stratagem of having both milk and alcohol available at the same counter is nothing but a master stroke to turn Bihar into land of ‘Milk and Honey’ which is precisely the name of a cocktail with exactly the same ingredients.

Cheers. Wish you a Merry Christmas and achhe din in 2016 and may you find your own land of Milk and Honey.

 LazyBee

22nd December 2015.