“Yes, what you like?” asks the restaurant owner. Or perhaps he is not the owner. He just happens to be in the restaurant. “Omelette and coffee.” The restaurant owner thinks. “Coffee is not possible. Tea is possible. Omelette, I do not know. Wait, please.” We sit down. He goes out and comes back after a few minutes. “Eggs are not possible.” “Why not?” I ask. “Problems in Jammu. Road closed, fifteen days.” “The road is closed for fifteen days? Why?” “Problems in Jammu,” he says. “So there are no eggs?” “No, eggs are not possible.” This doesn’t make much sense to me. Jammu is a nine-hour drive away. How can this possibly effect the local distribution of eggs? “If you like,” says the restaurant owner, “I make aloo gobi, rice, paratha. Maybe –” he thinks for a second or two – “maybe thirty minutes.”

We leave the restaurant. We want an omelette. Perhaps it wasn’t a restaurant at all (there didn’t seem to be a kitchen). We attempt breakfast in another place. It’s air-conditioned; there are no flies; surely they will have eggs here. “Yes, what you like?” asks a uniformed waiter. “Omelette and coffee.” “No.” “No?” “No, eggs are not possible.” “Why not?” “Strike in market,” he says. “Problems in Jammu. No eggs in town.”

I cannot believe this. This town must have eggs. I’ve seen chickens! Only last night we marvelled at a street-side stall that sold omelettes of truly unbelievable size: if I stretched my arms full-length, the tips of my fingers would only just touch the edges. I want to say: “You’re being ungrammatical. Eggs exist as a possibility; eggs are not only possible, eggs are a fact. It may be possible, indeed, that this town crashed its entire egg supplies on producing that outlandish pile of omelettes, or maybe militants have indeed struck at the vital egg supply chain to Kashmir – the global jihad will stop at nothing to disrupt and dismay the population – eggs may be hard to come by, my friend, but eggs are possible. Now I want an omelette.” But I know the only reply would be: “No, eggs are not possible.” We settle for tea and butter toast.