They eat bread but we get along. They were coming home for dinner so I had to sneak into a dealer’s place and score a whole loaf. The things we have to do for friends. I was wearing a hooded jacket but the boys in the pastry shop recognized me. I thought they were trying to suppress a laugh, and all the addicts in the bakery too. They were thinking, “Eventually everybody falls". I wanted to scream, “It’s not for me." Outside, it was broad daylight and there were children about, including little girls, who have a moral compass, and I tried to hide the loaf with my elbow. A passing old woman surely tried not to meet my eyes; she was probably widowed by maida (refined flour). I hoped I will not encounter anyone who knows me, and I remembered the time when I was a boy and my father sent me to buy rum from the local store, and I thought that if any classmate saw me with the liquor, I would hold my breath and die of shame.This is exactly what happens to me every time I am sent to buy bread. I am happy to be seen holding a Chetan Bhagat, but not bread. White bread, brown bread, other bread are, for all practical purposes, blobs of sugar.About five years ago, I quit all kinds of grain in the hope of running the half marathon in under 85 minutes. Some days I yield, but I know that modern mainstream food is a civilizational failure and a diabolic triumph of culture, which is the delivery device of a drug called sugar. You might be happy to learn that the latest diet book to hit India argues that people like me are completely wrong.