Fishy Tales
The Bangali bhadralok nearly jumped out of his skin earlier this week. For,his favourite fish, the hilsa (or ilish) looked set to get scarce this year.That’s because Bangladesh, which exports the prized fish (and Bangladeshihilsa is a thousand times tastier than that from this side of the border, as anybhadralok will swear) to Kolkata, had taken it off the export list. There werehowls of protest, including from ministers who sent urgent SOS messages to NewDelhi urging it to "take up the matter" with Dhaka. Ultimately (and toevery Bengali’s great relief) it transpired that the babus in Bangladesh’srevenue department had erroneously included hilsa in the list of items bannedfor export. The mistake has been rectified and, to everyone’s delight, trucksloaded with hilsa from Bangladesh have started rolling in.