Guys, our goose is cooked -- without LPG!
Guys, as a population, we are more or less done in -- and the worst thing is that it is our very own Government that has cooked our goose. As if the Home Minister’s much publicised blind alley in the lane of terror was not enough to give you heebie-jeebies, next came a series of scarier blasts of another kind — those from the price index.
These explosions are of the official kind, mandatory and meant to give you much more pain. You can’t cook much, drive much, buy much, save much, use power much or for that matter go for grocery shopping, home and car loans! Meaning to say, there is nothing that you can do anymore that won’t pinch your pockets more than you can bear.
But if you were one of those weirdos bent on looking for a silver lining in all things perennially bad, here’s one in the Government flattener — think alternative.
Here are your options, take them or leave them: With LPG deciding not to return from a pole vault jump, each puny little cylinder about to cost `750, you should divide your week into three chunks: Three days of having lunch at the mandir/Gurudwara langars near your colony. They come absolutely free! Two days of gate crashing a friend (you need to have lots of friends so that you do not repeat the demeanour more than once in three months for your friend to not start suspecting). One day of cooking at home, which could include all meals — breakfast, dinner and lunch. And, fast once a week — take up any pretext, be it religious, health-oriented or a weight watch tactic.
Then there are other options too: Opt for non-cook measures. Blend smoothies, have salads (if at all you can afford the greens like capsicum which is selling at `80 a kg, that is) and keep yourself away from the kitchen gas. A bread and butter menu can be resorted to if your pocket is pinching you more than your unhealthy maida intake. And the best thing to do while making these difficult choices is to have a very thick skin. Also calculate if eating out once a week is cheaper than burning the gas stove in your kitchen.
As we were settling in with these innovative ways to keep our budgets in the sane lane, someone burst our bubble. Really, we can’t be shifting from LPG to power consuming options like microwaves, mixies, blenders, ovens etc. Like LPG, our power tariff too has become prohibitive. We, for one, have reduced our three A/C home to a two A/C option, often huddling up in one room to save power! The silver lining here? Family togetherness, something that modern society has almost culled.
If you are in the Capital, the administration has done enough to terrorise you against any high spend or otherwise outings, thanks to the crazy 24x7 traffic jams that seem as unmanageable the price spiral at petrol stations. So, long drives are out and that should keep your fuel serpent defanged. Thank the administration for that! Otherwise, the mandarins of policy-making (by the way they get their fuel free on Government largesse) have seen to it that petrol will soon be as precious as yellow metal.
In just two years (from July 2009 when a litre of normal petrol cost `43 to September 2011 when it costs nearly `67) the price of petrol has gone up by `24 per litre. I remember a time when even a 10-25 paise rise in petrol charges would make for banner news and trigger the fall of Governments. That was in the 80s, and the trend continued till well into the 1990s.
No longer so. Now, the Government has cleverly devised a way to raise the bar every now and then, sometimes even in a fortnight’s time, tagging the fuel charges to international market rates. Strangely, they never come down, they are always ready to touch the skies like your aspirations. No one seems to protest either, so I guess, it is okay. Governments have returned to power despite the inflation, the price rise, the unaffordable cost of living, the crime, the terror and the overall rotten quotient of public life.
So, what’s the silver lining here? Well, well! We are a positive society which has the capability to take everything in the stride. Much like the legendary Indian immunity to dirt, germs and all things unhealthy, this too is as strong as those vaults in those Swiss undergrounds which stash unaccounted cash with no questions asked!
The petrol charges have, or will, serve one more purpose. The Government’s efforts to turn the populace to public transport seem to have been met. With the unaffordable liquid in your petrol tank, you might as well go to the metro station. After all, that will make you do a power walk, take care of your Vitamin D deficiency with the sun stoking your skin and also stitch up your pocket to a large extent. Worry not, if a terror attack has your limbs flying all over the tracks. For, we do have a Home Minister who will tell you he and his machinery is one of you — as helpless if not more; the Prime Minister (also the best brain in the economic world who can’t stop the price rise) will join you in your grief; and one of his Ministers will still have the audacity to mourn “Osamaji’s” sad demise and the other one will proffer arguments in favour of one Afzal Guru.
Didn’t I tell you? Your goose is cooked!
But if you were one of those weirdos bent on looking for a silver lining in all things perennially bad, here’s one in the Government flattener — think alternative.
Here are your options, take them or leave them: With LPG deciding not to return from a pole vault jump, each puny little cylinder about to cost `750, you should divide your week into three chunks: Three days of having lunch at the mandir/Gurudwara langars near your colony. They come absolutely free! Two days of gate crashing a friend (you need to have lots of friends so that you do not repeat the demeanour more than once in three months for your friend to not start suspecting). One day of cooking at home, which could include all meals — breakfast, dinner and lunch. And, fast once a week — take up any pretext, be it religious, health-oriented or a weight watch tactic.
Then there are other options too: Opt for non-cook measures. Blend smoothies, have salads (if at all you can afford the greens like capsicum which is selling at `80 a kg, that is) and keep yourself away from the kitchen gas. A bread and butter menu can be resorted to if your pocket is pinching you more than your unhealthy maida intake. And the best thing to do while making these difficult choices is to have a very thick skin. Also calculate if eating out once a week is cheaper than burning the gas stove in your kitchen.
As we were settling in with these innovative ways to keep our budgets in the sane lane, someone burst our bubble. Really, we can’t be shifting from LPG to power consuming options like microwaves, mixies, blenders, ovens etc. Like LPG, our power tariff too has become prohibitive. We, for one, have reduced our three A/C home to a two A/C option, often huddling up in one room to save power! The silver lining here? Family togetherness, something that modern society has almost culled.
If you are in the Capital, the administration has done enough to terrorise you against any high spend or otherwise outings, thanks to the crazy 24x7 traffic jams that seem as unmanageable the price spiral at petrol stations. So, long drives are out and that should keep your fuel serpent defanged. Thank the administration for that! Otherwise, the mandarins of policy-making (by the way they get their fuel free on Government largesse) have seen to it that petrol will soon be as precious as yellow metal.
In just two years (from July 2009 when a litre of normal petrol cost `43 to September 2011 when it costs nearly `67) the price of petrol has gone up by `24 per litre. I remember a time when even a 10-25 paise rise in petrol charges would make for banner news and trigger the fall of Governments. That was in the 80s, and the trend continued till well into the 1990s.
No longer so. Now, the Government has cleverly devised a way to raise the bar every now and then, sometimes even in a fortnight’s time, tagging the fuel charges to international market rates. Strangely, they never come down, they are always ready to touch the skies like your aspirations. No one seems to protest either, so I guess, it is okay. Governments have returned to power despite the inflation, the price rise, the unaffordable cost of living, the crime, the terror and the overall rotten quotient of public life.
So, what’s the silver lining here? Well, well! We are a positive society which has the capability to take everything in the stride. Much like the legendary Indian immunity to dirt, germs and all things unhealthy, this too is as strong as those vaults in those Swiss undergrounds which stash unaccounted cash with no questions asked!
The petrol charges have, or will, serve one more purpose. The Government’s efforts to turn the populace to public transport seem to have been met. With the unaffordable liquid in your petrol tank, you might as well go to the metro station. After all, that will make you do a power walk, take care of your Vitamin D deficiency with the sun stoking your skin and also stitch up your pocket to a large extent. Worry not, if a terror attack has your limbs flying all over the tracks. For, we do have a Home Minister who will tell you he and his machinery is one of you — as helpless if not more; the Prime Minister (also the best brain in the economic world who can’t stop the price rise) will join you in your grief; and one of his Ministers will still have the audacity to mourn “Osamaji’s” sad demise and the other one will proffer arguments in favour of one Afzal Guru.
Didn’t I tell you? Your goose is cooked!
Source: Sunday Pioneer, 18 Sept, 2011
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