My reasoning, as it unraveled at the time, seemed logical enough. The growing population needed protein and eggs were the cheapest source of that protein, acceptable even to the finicky veggies. “There’s gold in them eggs,” about summed up my market survey.

I knew I had it in me to make it big in the poultry business and I could imagine banner headlines on the commercial pages – ‘Egg Emperor to go Multinational’ and ‘Poultry Potentate Corners the Chicken Feed Market’ and ‘Chicken Czar to add a Thousand Birds to His Flock’.

Another John D. Rockefeller in the making? Well, time will tell.

The pamphlets were conveniently divided into four chapters – ‘Introducing you to poultry’ (How do you do Mr. White Leghorn), Building a coop, Selection of birds and Economics of egg production and marketing.

Wanting to save on overheads – that’s how Henery Ford and Bill Gates got their starts, I decided to build the coop myself and scrounged around the neighbourhood for discarded tar drums beaten flat and bits of wood and zinc sheets and armed with a hammer and a few rusty nails, I went to work with a vengeance and when my handiwork was complete, I looked heavenward and delivered a silent benediction of thanksgiving that my maker, in his divine wisdom, had made me a ‘homo – sapien’ and not a chicken and a future resident of my coop.The next item on the agenda was the selection of birds and pamphlet No. 3 recommended that I go for Pearlbro Samrats for they were ‘prolific layers’, whatever that meant. A quick trip to the Russel Market and I was well stocked with the Samrats and returning home. I ceremoniously ushered them into their new home.

The next morning found me sitting on an upturned tub in front of the coops, waiting eagerly and expectantly for the birds to start laying their eggs which I would collect in a whacking wicker basket and flog them on a rising market at usurious prices and laugh all the way to the bank. However, instead of going about briskly with their task of laying eggs, the birds kept pecking listlessly at their feed.

Alarmed, I sent away for a fashionable and frightfully expensive society vet who, after examining the birds, pronounced that they had contracted roop and that their throats needed immediate ‘painting’. However, further treatment at this stage came to an abrupt halt for the vet could not decide on a colour scheme for his painting job.

My poultry business is now in the hands of a competent court appointed receiver and I am mourning over a thousand pieces of a shattered roseate dream but I have one consolation of sorts though. My poultry business, if not the birds, has ‘laid an egg’.

S. Raghunath