Trying to digest the price rise

It's close to 10 pm and a frantic call comes from my roomie. "When did this happen?" she almost shrieked over the phone

Trying to digest the price rise

It's close to 10 pm and a frantic call comes from my roomie. "When did this happen?" she almost shrieked over the phone. Whoa! "What? Who died?" I asked, trying to figure out my copy and her question at the same time.

Her turn to be flummoxed. "Die? Who? What? Woman do you have any clue of what I am trying to tell you?" she yelled back. "No actually I don't. So please enlighten me. I am trying to seriously catch up on someone's tweet," pat came my cold reply.u00a0u00a0

"Andas are now 50 bucks," she was close to tears now (this girl can live on eggs all her life, if nothing else were available and even if everything else was available). "Yeah, I know, it happened the time when you were happily cooling your heels in Calcutta while I tried to figure out what to cook the next day since eggs are the only thing we seem to be having day and night," I replied. "What will I eat now? Can't afford to have eggs everyday, chicken comes for no less than Rs 150 and fish in CR Park is so expensive that if you even touch it you will get an electric shock," the girl was seriously sobbing now. "Okay okay, cool cool. Let me get back home and we'll figure out what to do about the price of eggs," I said.

As if I can move even a bone about that. But seriously, with the prices of every food item heading north, it is getting increasingly difficult to keep up. So one has to tread cautiously and not shout at the sabziwala every time he says: "Madam kya karein, fir se daam bar gaya." Monthly grocery bills make us repeat our feeble acts with the calculator over and over again. Not that it can bring down the expenditure. Eating out is slowly becoming unaffordable and starving isn't an option either. Shopping is also slowly becoming a luxury.

While this isn't a column to crib about how meagre our salaries are, sometimes I really shudder to think about how people (and families) who earn less than even Rs 3,000 manage to make ends meet? Travel to work perhaps (with petrol and CNG prices up, transport costs have also gone up)?u00a0u00a0

And I shudder to think about old age, when our tiny savings will seem minuscule. Perhaps the time has come for our policy makers to stop concentrating on growth rates despite which almost half the population is grovelling below or just above the poverty line and think seriously about checking the demon of price rise that has been swaying its ugly head threateningly.

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