Here is an editorial excerpt from The Vendor of Sweets, based in the pre-outsourcing boom India.

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Jagan, a conservative and philosophical man, who now follows the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi to the letter, if not with the same spirit he had mustered while standing up to the British. His only son, Mali goes off to the United States to study and occasionally sends him letters:

"The only letter Jagan rigorously suppressed was the one in which Mali had written after three years' experience of America, 'I've taken to eating beef, and I don't think I'm any the worse for it. Steak is something quite tasty and juicy. Now I want to suggest why don't you people start eating beef? It'll solve the problem of useless cattle in our country and we won't have to beg food from America. I sometimes feel ashamed when India asks for American aid. Instead of that, why not slaughter useless cows which wander in the streets and block the traffic?' Jagan felt outraged. The shastras defined the five deadly sins and the killing of a cow headed the list.

While he was cogitating on how to make his feelings felt on teh subject and collecting quotations from the shastras and Gandhi's writings on the cow, to be incorporated in his letter to Mali, there came a cable once morning: 'Arriving home: another person with me.' Jagan was puzzled. What sort of a person?"

-Copyright (c) R.K. Narayan

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~ysimmhan/personal/indianlit/narayan/vendor.html

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