Grocery Shopping, an Extreme Sport

It is high time that shopping for groceries is declared an extreme sport. It is far more dangerous than bungee jumping, skydiving etc. The chances of your bursting a blood vessel or getting a heart attack is far higher here than the chance of you breaking your head or bones or giving up the ghost in the other extreme sports (Note the OTHER, I have already declared it a dangerous sport).

It all began for me, a guy who steers clear of danger in every way, a guy chap nurses ambitions of dying peacefully ub old age in say another half a century,, on the eve of the Pongal festival when my wife stumbled upon the terrible truth about the absence in our house of moong dal, the vital ingredient to make the dish after which the festival is named. (I hold my head up in pride as a Tamil. Only we have a festival named after a dish. After all, there are no festivals named tandoori chicken, butter chicken or matar- paneer?).

Immediately she did the unthinkable and unspeakable thing. She told me to rush out and get a kilo of the lentil. I always steer clear of buying dals as I cannot tell one lentil from another. I mix up chana and arahar dal which often look like long lost twins. But this was an emergency as my wife and daughter were neck deep in pre-festival house cleaning. So I rushed out and plunged headlong into danger without even realizing it. I didn't know that the seemingly simple task of buying a kilo of lentils was fraught with high risk and peril.

So I entered the self service store and took a packet of the dal.. The bill I got at the counter nearly gave me a heart attack and sent up my usually below normal BP soaring. The world at least .the shop spun around me. I suppose I escaped narrowly from getting a heart attack or a burst blood vessel.

Believe it or not, the price of dal stood at Rs 143 per kilo!That too not in the open market but at a central government cooperative store which prides at giving the customers discounts making all items available below the market price..

"Can't you make pongal without moong dal?" I mumbled as I reached home. "Can you stage Hamlet without the prince of Denmark?" retorted my wife.

I escaped narrowly though my BP soared faster than the price of dal but others may not be that lucky. Both me and my wife agreed that the grocery shops should follow the system adopted by fashion designers who as a rule tag .their creations with ' price on request' possibly to protect the prospective buyer from heart attacks and skyrocketing B when they quote the rate.

Here is a scenario at a grocery shop:

Customer: A kilo of moong dal please?

Shopkeeper: Is your BP okay? What's your bad lipoprotein and triglyceride level? Do you have a history of heart problems?

Customer (puzzled): What has all these got to do with a simple request for moong dal?

Shopkeeper: Do you have a medical certificate proving that you don't have abovementioned ailments?

Customer:: (getting angry): What for? I just need a kilo of lentils?

Shopkeeper: Do you think I should have an ambulance standing by with a medical team before I quote the price?

Customer Whose BP IS now really soaring): Just tell me the price of the dal will you!!! (This sentence is preceded by a series of unprintables).

The shopkeeper quotes the price and sees the customer vanish from before his eyes? Wondering whether the customer is endowed with superspeed or ability to disappear, he looks down and finds the customer lying on the ground gasping for breath.

Shopkeeper (blending a note of triumph with sorrow): I warned you didn't I?

At this rate the health ministry should make it compulsory for shopkeepers to have a sign outside their stores declaring that shopping for groceries is injurious to health and every customer must come armed with proper medical certificates along with shopping bags.

But this could be fun. At this rate we would soon have reality shows on TV which would require the participants to survive a grocery shopping spree.

And the way price of lentils is soaring soon they would have a pride of price along with exotic items like caviar, foie gras at the parties of rich and famous.

And you can always catch middle class government servants and slap cases of owning assets disproportionate to known sources of income if they are caught buying lentils. Politicians and bureaucrats will jack up their bribe rates pleading that they have to buy groceries with that.

Who knows in future even Swiss bank vaults could yield kilos of lentils stashed there by our babus, netas and businessmen who start hoarding dals , giving that worthless yellow metal gold and precious stones a go by.

 

Soaring is an understatement. The prices have already crossed the stratosphere.

 

Hey which temple is that? It must be a heavily subsidized one. Otherwise even beggars outside temples dont accept Rs 2.50/1

 

knot2share, what is the name of this Rs 2.50 paise archana temple. Bhagavan Inflationproofesvara/