Column

Last night George Bush came close to declaring war on India. It's widely believed that he arrived at this decision following an upset stomach caused by a daily diet of misquotes, faux pas and eating his own words.

Someone suggested curd-rice as a remedy to soothe his digestive tracts which had still not got used to Bushisms like "They misunderestimated me!" and "Mandela's dead. Because Saddam killed all the Mandelas!"

But curd-rice was in short supply across Washington DC and the Udipi restaurant across the street from the White House confessed that they had just served their last plate of curd-rice to a bunch of middle class South Indians on a SOTC package tour! Bush was livid. "I smell conspiracy," he sneered. "The Indian government is sending its people to our country to eat up all our rice!"

It suddenly struck him that all these years while he was looking for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction; India had quietly developed something more dangerous - The Indian Middle Class! Or as Bush prefers to call them - Weapons of Mass Consumption!

As Bush tossed and turned in his bed, there was a frantic knock on the door. "Who's it?" he asked.
"Rice!"

Bush sat up in bed. "You mean curd-rice? Fried rice? Or is it plain rice?"
"Condoleezza Rice!"

Bush opened the door and saw his Secretary of State looking extremely hassled. "My visit to India was a disaster, Mr President," she said. "Everywhere I went people were waiting with utensils and gas stoves - to cook me! And they would politely ask me whether I preferred to be fried or steamed! I think their fixation with rice is getting out of control!"Bush concluded that the Indian middle class had a huge appetite for rice in all its avatars - ghee rice, sambar rice, tomato rice, lemon rice, dal rice… and now Condoleezza Rice!

"We must stop these Indians from eating up all the rice on this planet," he growled. "We must warn our ignorant, gullible American people that Osama Bin Laden is no longer our biggest enemy! Because there's a new threat on the horizon. It's the growing middle class population of India, which is thriving in third class conditions and being treated as second class citizens but seems to possess a first class appetite! We'll attack India… but first let me locate the damn country on the map!"