Of Mice and Mailmen

There’s a can of refried beans in my kitchen. This is remarkable because Indians don’t do refried beans. I get a thrill every time I look at it. It arrived last week in a care package my friend JJ mailed from LA almost four months ago.

The Indian postal service is notoriously unreliable. It’s not unusual for packages to be “lost” in transit or arrive with half their contents missing. Customs agents and postal workers, like mistresses, are particularly fond of sweets and new clothes.

On Tuesday morning, my flatmate Nathan and I were swapping postal horror stories. He’d knocked on a dozen doors and paid the equivalent of $300 in fees and bribes to rescue a package he’d shipped from Korea to India. I’d lost hope of receiving JJ’s package. On Monday I’d been to the post office and lectured the workers on airmail ethics. “It will go soon, yes?” I said as they pried an LA-bound package from my fingers. “Not lost. Package will not be lost, yes?” In that moment, I hated India.

Tuesday afternoon my phone rang. JJ’s package was waiting for me at the post office. I couldn’t have been more surprised if the caller had told me I’d won a million dollars.

I picked up the battered package the next day. There was a hole about the size of a fist on one side, and when I peered through it, I spied a stick of Toblerone. How remarkable, I thought. Bloody postal workers passed on Swiss chocolate.


Inside, I found a ready-to-make Mexican meal: not just refried beans but also flour tortillas, corn chips, flavored rice, cheese sauce and jalapeno salsa. But my jig of joy stopped short. There was a gash in the box of rice. Corn chips rained from their bag. It looked as if someone had taken a giant bite out of the 10 tortillas.

Postal workers weren’t the culprits, it soon became clear. A rat had raided my care package. A rat with a taste for Mexican and not the slightest hint of a sweet tooth. (The Toblerone was untouched – at least until Ben came home – as were a pair of Twinkies.)


I’m planning a fusion meal: chapattis stuffed with refried beans, chunks of paneer, and sautéed onions and bell peppers. Chapattis, a staple here, aren’t unlike wheat tortillas. Nathan’s cook taught me how to make them this weekend.

JJ had thought of everything. He’d read my entries on itches and ants and sent calamine lotion, ant motels, and Ziploc containers and bags. There were Band-Aids and Banana Boat sunblock, Wet Ones cleansing wipes and Purell hand sanitizer, Imodium and Tylenol PM, organic deodorant and Odwalla Bars, Emergen-C drink powder and Q-tips, chamomile conditioner and hemp peppermint soap.

And one more thing: