Being away from home for 5 months at Paris, I have started to see things in India little more differently now. In particular, the money, paisa, dabbu.
Bapuji..bachao hume
Right on my first day at office, during lunch I got the first shock of the peaked prices. One Chicken Biryani - 175, 1 Drums of Heaven - 245. Actually this is little funnier. The menu was divided into two columns for Appetizers and this item was among the list of other non-veg items. A huge left hand flower bracket grouping all these were listed as the price quoted. "So all these put together would be 245 right? Like a platter I mean", I inquired with Sushma who was sitting beside me. "Come on yaar, its only one item. By the way, don't worry too much I am giving the party", she replied back with a smile. I smiled a weak response. Once the orders were placed, we were then continuing to discuss about other things like the bygone days of DTC, the new faces in AFMS, the new building.
Someone then had asked me how I came to office that day. "By auto, I had to pay 150 bucks!" I replied. By this time Sushma was exasperated with my over attention to money and declared to the bench "Guys, I think from now on we can expect that anything that Karthik is going to talk about will be followed by a price tag". Funnily, I never bothered so much on the money after the initial one week stay at Paris. Coming back, I feel all the prices have shot up and people were utterly apathetic about it. Maybe this being a party nobody was really paying much attention.
The following day I tried out the common cafeteria. Woof. Smoking! Chicken Noodles - 65! Wait. Look over there - 'Sub of the Day - 99 Only!' Since when did 99 become only? Is this a mock BATA rate? Of course I knew the prices here would be more compared to our usual cafeteria. What I wasn't prepared was to have a meal with a drink one would be shelling out at least 100 bucks.
The third day, Wednesday was when I felt I was back on the ground. Lunch this time I had at our cafeteria and just like 5 months back the prices were still intact at 18 bucks for 2 roti/ paratha. So things weren't as bad as I started imagining. I am definitely sure though that something is not right. Prices did skyrocket but I am yet to sink in that feeling.
The climax of the episode was when I was filling my petrol. 1 Ltr - 72 that's a 16% increase from 62 when I had left. Why is it that such inflation is being accepted without any major protests or for that matter by the blogosphere community. I admit I haven't been following national news but heck I have been on to the blogs as good as ever.
With such steep prices, and slow moving salaries, how are they expecting us to continue to live our lifestyle of binging out once in a while, movies, shopping and then the enoromous work that the job demands? With my now renewed focus on my health and diet, it is indeed giving me an incentive to watch how much I spend over eating, drinking and making sure I stay healthy without leaning towards extreme starvation.
Speaking of spending I have almost spent 3 grand buying clothes and books. Whoopsie, where is the monthly calculator!
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