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Would You Like Rice With That? Melvin Durai Melvin Durai is an Indiana-based writer and humorist. Born in Tamil Nadu, India, he grew up in Zambia and moved to the U.S. in the early 1980s. In 1995, while working as a reporter for a daily newspaper in Chambersburg, Pa., he began writing a regular humor column. His weekly column now appears in several newspapers and on a number of Web sites. He also writes a twice-monthly column on Indian and Indian-American issues. He is a diehard fan of the National Football League and also likes to run, lift weights and play soccer, tennis and pool. An award-winning feature writer and aspiring novelist, he plans to publish a collection of his best columns. You can write to him at comments@melvindurai.com To read his older columns, go to http://www.melvindurai.com

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Picture this: You're a single woman going on a first date with a dashing businessman. Quite the charmer, he arrives in a gleaming Mercedes, hands you a bouquet of roses, and compliments your elegant dress. You ask where he's taking you for dinner and he replies with a sly wink, "You'll see. It's a surprise." And indeed it is, for you're soon sitting at a corner table, gazing romantically into his eyes, taking dainty bites of your McDonald's fries. What a guy -- he's even unwrapping your burger for you.

Such romance may seem ludicrous in America, where a first date to McDonald's means only one thing: No second date. Why else do you think it took me so long to get married? I'd give a woman a Big Mac and she'd give me a Big Smack.

But in India, with fewer than 100 McDonald's restaurants, a visit to the Golden Arches still holds a certain charm, partly because American fast food is somewhat of a luxury -- not the cheap meal that feeds the masses in America, many of whom have been led to believe, through advertising, that it's better than eating cardboard. (Truth is, compared to the average fast-food meal, a piece of cardboard abounds with nutrition. Just one bite delivers a year's supply of fiber.)

McDonald's, Subway, Pizza Hut and others are trying to expand their market share in India, realizing that a billion people can't all eat curry and rice.

Indian man: "Would you like to go out for dinner?"

Woman: "Sorry, today is Monday and I always fast on Mondays."

Man: "Great! Then let's get some fast food."

Not surprisingly, fast food chains have altered their menus to appeal to the Indian palate. Subway's sandwiches include Paneer Tikka, Seekh Kebab and Chicken Tikka, while McDonald's serves Pizza McPuff, McAloo Tikki and Paneer Salsa McWrap. And don't be surprised if these items are soon served on McBanana Leaves.

The McPuff and McWrap were developed in India and are being used in other countries, according to a recent New York Times article. I hope they're soon available in America, because the current McDonald's menu is absolutely McBland. Frankly, I'm McTired of it.

But whatever you think of McDonald's menu, you have to give the company credit for trying to adapt to Indian tastes and concerns. Once berated for using beef tallow in its cooking, McDonald's is now careful, in its Indian stores, to keep vegetarian and non-vegetarian cooking separate. In fact, a worker from the non-vegetarian section can't enter the vegetarian section without taking a shower and without being thoroughly searched by the vegetarian immigration authorities. Anyone caught trying to smuggle a meat product into the vegetarian section is immediately McFired. And that's the McTruth.

While it may be a good sign that American companies are eager to expand in India, I'd hate to see the Golden Arches in every town. Chain stores have already turned American towns into facsimiles of each other.

McDonald's has 16 outlets in Mumbai and, with a few more, someone may raise a statue of an American leader. George W. Bush? No, Bill Clinton, the king of fast food.

Cartoon Copyright © Sudeep Ross

For an email subscription to Melvin's regular weekly columns (not the ones that appear here), go to www.MelvinDurai.com

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