Avian influenza.. no chickens for you,idiot!

I ought to have written about it earlier, but to write late is better than not to write at all. Bird flu has come to India. While it had first surfaced in places like China and Thailand a few years back people raised quite a hue and cry about bird flu in India and what we should do and what not. As a serious chicken eater I was naturally concerned. But the crisis seemed to blow over and everything was hunky-dory, that is from my point of view. I went on eating chicken and eggs and the veggies, Lord bless them, continued with their ghas pus.Even though chicks started dropping dead in thousands from Vietnam to Turkey to Africa (maybe Uganda, I am not sure), the virus seemed to forget that there was a place called India. Until Jan 17.

The next morning when I woke up the first thing I heard even before I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes was that virus H5N1 has struck big time. And the place where it had surfaced was about 5 hours from where I live. I don’t want to be too dramatic but at that moment I felt as if I had bee kicked by a mule. That was because we had a party the previous night and for me, a party means chicken .The only symptom of bird flu, as far as I know, was fever and even though I did not have any thermometer, I seemed to be fine. Finally after four or five days of scrutiny I concluded that there was nothing wrong with me. In the meantime there was a call from home forbidding me not to go within ten feet of chicken. Dad also asked if I had eaten in the recent days. Like a wimp I lied because telling the truth would only worry them and would do nobody any good.

Meanwhile eggs also started disappearing even as I watched glumly the visuals of them being destroyed by gowned and masked men in the quarantined area. Even though the government tried to assure that it was safe to continue as usual and the agriculture minister went on the warpath scolding municipal authorities who had prevented fowls from entering their jurisdictions, he was not helped in his cause by reports that one or two persons had died near the epicenter.

As far as I see this situation is going to last for quite some time. It always takes time before people will recover their confidence enough to touch chicken. And for people who don’t take after mutton or fish or pork or beef like myself it will be a tough wait. Maybe I should start eating soyabean.You know, with proper seasoning it tastes just like a piece of boneless chicken. Coming from a hardcore non veggie, I can almost hear the veggies and the PETA people chuckling.Sigh! Every dog has his day.