The arrival of fresh food has been a windfall for us at Maitri. It has created a strange situation here- onions have become the new currency here. Onions are being traded with lemons, each onion is being consumed in partnership with 2 or 3 people who have a contract with each other. People are also looking to acquire onions from each other through ‘nefarious’ means- coax, cajole, cheat- all is fair.
My partner is Chaubeyji. We now have our dinner together so that we can share one onion among the 2 of us. We either make a vegetable or an omelette or eat it raw as salad. If the onion is too large for the 2 of us to consume, then we rope in another partner with a binding on him to return us the favour when he fishes out his onion. I managed to obtain an onion recently from My Rayudu, who did not want to eat it. It was a bonus for me as well as for Chaubeyji, and increased our bargaining power with the others. Chaubeyji also managed to get one from Gaffar. So we both can be counted as richest people in Maitri presently.
Fruits- apples and oranges are not much in demand and hence do not increase our bargaining value. They can be obtained by the dozen.
Yes, inspite of all the variety of frozen fruits and vegetables, one quickly gets tired of them. When we reached Cape Town after having been on ship for 6 weeks, we loaded lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, and for next 3 days, I had nothing but fresh fruits and salad for my meals.
ReplyDeleteDear sir,
ReplyDeleteWe took did the same thing when we received the fresh fruits and vegetable. But many people ended up with a upset stomach the next morning. We will take time to adjust to a lot of things when we return.
Your post on static electricity is very similar to mine except that it is more informative. Another major difference is the number of comments you receive on your blog. I envy you for that.
The life seems to be too harsh at the end of the earth but the fact that despite of the hardships, u went there and spend the whole year is an achievement in itself by all standards.We all live by routine but sometimes things out of routine is needed to make sense of the kind of life we are living.
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