Sunday Special: Bitter tea for people, sweet fuel for cars

These days, traffic jams smell like sweet sohan halwa due to vehicle emissions.

Nowadays, when you step out on the road, the traffic jam smells like Sohan Halwa due to the fumes. Yesterday, I told the petrol pump attendant, "Brother! Fill petrol worth ₹100." Holding the pipe, he seriously asked,

"Sir! Should I fill plain petrol, or add cardamom and kewra?" When I stared in surprise, he said, "Sir! Nowadays, cars have less petrol and more sugarcane juice. Check the sweetness; yesterday, ants infested a gentleman's car!"

Now the situation is such that people are measuring their car's mileage not in kilometers, but in calories. At night, instead of stealing petrol, thieves attach pipes to car tanks to extract sugarcane juice and sell it at street corners in the morning.

It has been reported that sugarcane, which could have produced 30 lakh tonnes of sugar, has gone straight into car tanks. The result? Sugar, which is a poor man's staple, is set to become 40% more expensive in two months, reaching around ₹70 per kilo. Such an increase in two months? This isn't inflation; it's like the last over of a cricket match where every ball is hit for a six. But you must appreciate our government's economic acrobatics.

We stopped using expensive petrol worth billions and fed our cars indigenous sugarcane juice to save our precious foreign exchange reserves. Now, see the marvel that with the saved foreign exchange, we are importing 10 lakh tonnes of duty-free sugar from Brazil! Meaning, we stopped pleading with Arabs for crude oil, and now we are flattering Brazilians for sugar.

Kejriwal Sahib is unnecessarily complaining that the money for petrol has gone into sugar. Oh dear! Now our strong Indian tea will have foreign (imported) sugar dissolved in it, isn't that a small progress? Even my motorcycle is behaving strangely these days. Yesterday, it started jerking on the road, so I showed it to a mechanic.

He opened the plug, sniffed, and said, "Sir! The bike's sugar level is down, immediately feed it half a kilo of jalebi!" Now, when the traffic police issue a challan, they won't ask for a license. They'll directly ask, "Show the car's three-month sugar report (HbA1c), your car was burping sweetly at the last signal!"

Soon, instead of mechanics, hakims will sit at service stations, who will put 'majoon' (a tonic) in the engine to cure its weakness, and dentists will check car silencers to ensure the engine hasn't been infested by too much sweetness.

The government has also started a crackdown on hoarders and has restricted wholesale buyers from stocking sugar for more than 15 days. The day is not far when CID and Anti-Narcotics will raid sweet shops in the dead of night.

If sugar for the sixteenth day is found in a confectioner's warehouse, he will be handcuffed as if he were an international smuggler. The police will proudly announce at a press conference: "We have caught a dangerous gang from whom we seized two kilos of pure sugar and a pan of syrup!"

This international flight of sugar has put ants more in tension than humans. Yesterday, two ants were wailing in our kitchen,

since sugar became expensive, the lady of the house has put a biometric lock on the container! It's been eight days since we've even seen the face of sweetness." The price of sugar has become so royal that now in weddings, the dowry will be decided not in tolas, but in sacks. The bride's side will proudly announce that the groom's side gave two kilos of pure imported sugar as a gift.

The day is not far when people will tell the grocer, "Lala Ji! Give me two kilos of flour, and yes, also give a sachet of sugar, guests are coming over." And if some naive guest mistakenly asks for a second spoon of sugar in tea, it won't be considered hospitality, but straightforward 'extortion'.

Guests will become so cultured that after drinking half a cup of bland tea, they'll tell the host, "Mashallah! The sweetness in your words is nowhere to be found in Brazilian sugar!" We have found a cheap solution to inflation. If the tea lacks sweetness, we simply step out on the road. Standing behind any government bus's silencer, we take two deep breaths and sip the tea.

Believe me, the sweetness of sugarcane juice from ethanol fumes directly hits the brain, which is unmatched by any sugar in the world! Just one request to the government, if you've mixed sugarcane juice in petrol, then please add some ice and mint in the summer, so that while walking on the road, we can fully experience drinking cold sugarcane juice!