Nuts.

This is absolutely crazy.I'd hate to start this new year in such a discordant note. Actually I wanted to inaugurate the year by writing a spiritual piece.But the fact is that every thing has gone topsy turvy---ulta pulta.

I normally visited the shop selling nuts and dried fruits to purchase almonds, cashew nuts and dried grapes , only once a month.To me nuts are a luxury , being pricey and used sparingly ,only to garnish sweet dishes like payasam[kheer] and chakarai [ sweet] pongal.

I had turned a deaf ear to the mass chantings about the rise in the price of onions,that has been going on non stop for a month or so . I had thought that the price rise was a passing phase that would right itself and fall down in a matter of few weeks.

Today when I set out, on foot and not in a fuel guzzling suv,I don't own one, to buy greens, the poor man's vegetable ,his only source of vitamins and minerals and the rich man's diet --the roughage to shed fat , I was in for a shock.

The 2 bundles of palak that were so thinly bunched, that it could easily slip through the circle formed by thumb and index finger and yet leave a gap, was priced at Rs 25!It was selling at Rs 2 a bundle barely a few weeks ago. And a generous bunch it was.

Most of the onions on the rack were shrivelled .Others had a cloud of tiny mosquito's hovering over them. Several had sprouted long shoots!And the price of this junk that would normally be thrown away as waste was priced at 65 Rs a KG!

And the price of carrots ,the vegetable that is always available in plenty in winter and is the cheapest vegetable of these months is also running neck to neck in this maddening race.

If this is going to continue,I would be forced to haunt the nuts and dried fruits shop more often .They haven't risen to these lofty heights and strangely have become cheaper than their poor cousins---vegetables!And delicacies like Kajoo kathili and Badam kheer are now cheaper to prepare than wholesome aloo mattar and palak paneer sabzhi's,for a family of four!It goes without saying that idli sambhar the staple breakfast, has also become a sunday treat. This happened several months earlier with prices of toor, urad and other dhals and oil ,climbing slowly but steadily to unattainable heights over the past few years.

Mary Antonoite's famous advise 'Eat cakes if there is no bread' seems very apt in the current situation.

But how long can one still the cravings of the palate with badam and cashew nuts?