Vegetable Curry

     We had seen a play, New House Under Construction, in which a writer who was also an architect used imagination and revision as weapons of self-destruction, applying them not only to his work, where they would have served him well, but to his life, where they didn’t serve him well at all. He tortured himself with thoughts of infidelities, inadequacies, and treacheries that might have been, and then he tortured himself some more with thoughts of the consequences that might have resulted if what might have been actually had been. At first, he made me squirm, but by the time the play had ended he had inspired me to think of something that might have been a part of everyday life and the consequences that would result if what might have been were now to be.
     At Agra, while spooning a bit of onion relish onto a papadum, I said, “I’ve had a brilliant idea.”
     “Will it make your fortune?” she asked.
     “It will increase the level of civility by a significant amount, and that will be reward enough.”
     “And what is this brilliant idea?”
     “If the federal government eventually decides that the three dinosaurs in Detroit must not be allowed to die, I think that a condition ought to be attached to any form of support that is financed by public funds.”
     “I think that’s already being discussed,” she said.
     “Yes, but not the condition that I propose to impose.”
     “Which is?”
     “The automakers should be required to equip every car—I mean every vehicle—with a device that administers a shock to the driver whenever he or she blows the horn.”
     “A shock?”
     Our food arrived, and there was an interval of rearrangement, a shuffling of the items on the table to make room for the many dishes we had ordered.
     “Yes, a shock,” I said. “It needn’t be very painful to have the desired effect, but it ought to be annoying enough to make the driver think twice before pressing — or hitting — the horn button. Of course, it couldn’t be such a jolt that a driver would avoid sounding the horn when it was really needed, but in most cases applying the brakes is what is really needed, not blowing the horn.”
     “Then maybe the same results could be achieved by providing some pleasurable sensation when the driver applies the brakes.”
     “There is your compassion showing again. You want to lure the idiots toward good behavior instead of driving them away from the bad. I doubt that the idiots running the automobile companies can devise anything that would deliver pleasure — certainly nothing that gives as much pleasure as this rich, smooth, and peppery dal, or this subtly flavored cabbage, or this crispy chapati. However, I have no doubt that they could devise something that would administer pain — they would even be very good at it — and that’s all I ask of them.”