By Uma Ramachandran
With the value of the rupee plunging to a record low, the Indian middle class is trying every trick under the Sun to take the rupee that extra mile. Every penny is squeezed till it squeals. “May you live in interesting times” is a Chinese curse. And we, who do live in these times, can attest to both the fact that we are living in interesting times, and that it is a curse. Don’t agree? Just go shopping for grocery.
About 10 or 20- years ago, we used to go shopping and return with a heavy bag and a light heart. However, now we go shopping and return with a light bag and a heavy heart. With inflation putting a heavy squeeze on us, we are all re-evaluating our economic worth. We are left to wonder where we lie in the cross-section of Indian economy.
Like it or not, worth and status of individuals are determined by how much money they have. Based on this criterion, economists divide people into socio-economic segments such as below poverty line, poor, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class and the affluent or the rich.
But this is a sliding scale, and the people who slide back and forth the most are those in the middle class categories, that are currently poised at around 13 per cent of the total Indian population. Most of us fall into this category, and, let’s face it, in today’s inflationary atmosphere; we are fast sliding backwards into near poverty. Any blip on economy’s radar translates into large waves that threaten to sink or speed our ships.
Status wise, while it is pitiful to be poor, and desirable to be rich, many people think it infra dig to be considered middle class. However, when you think about it, ours is the class which has the most potential. With no overwhelming fear of starvation, reasonable means to education, and burning ambition, people in this class have the ability to lead challenging and rewarding lives. We also have the ability to think ourselves into the other socio-economic segments, based on our own attitudes and state of mind. When you are happy with your life, you are, philosophically speaking, rich, while someone who constantly feels insecure financially, can be called poor. Speaking of state of mind, if you find a hundred rupee note, you feel rich for that instant, while if your pocket gets picked, you feel poor.
And today, your average middle class Madhav/Mubarak/Mathew and Mridula/Maggie/Mubeena, basically you and I, are definitely feeling poor. Inflation is threatening the way we live our lives, and the dreams we have of ensuring a better future for our children. So we are hitching up our pants, drawing in our guts, taking a deep breath, and tightening our belts figuratively. In effect, we are running faster to stay in place.
But, economising is not new to the middle class. In fact, it is the hallmark, the very raison d’etre of our existence. It pervades every sphere of our lives, making every saved rupee a personal triumph, and every wasted paisa a lesson for the future. How do we accomplish it?
Let us start in the bowels of our middle class home — the bathroom. No middle class household’s (MCH) bathroom is complete without a completely flattened toothpaste tube. Think the toothpaste tube has run out? Think again. Use enough force on the hapless tube, and it may live to whiten your teeth, kill germs and prevent tooth decay for another day. It used to be easier when they had metal based tubes. Those things could be cajoled, flattened, even bulldosed into yielding every last bit of paste.
Shampoo is another thing that can be drawn out. A good MCH knows that if you twist off the cap of that can, pour a little water, and give it a good shake, you can get two more hair washes out of it. As for hand soap, dilute before pouring it in is the mantra. Others are: unwrap soap and keep it exposed for a few hours before use, it will last longer. And put the empty soap wrapper among clothes — a cheap way to perfume them. And when branded cosmetic products are priced sky-high, use generics.
Speaking of clothes, the younger siblings in MCHs are usually doomed. This knowledge comes from painful personal experiences. We invariably had hand me downs thrust on us, thus eliminating the need to buy new clothes for us… at least until we grew bigger and taller than our older brothers or sisters. Trading across families is also rampant, and yields more value for the money spent, until a child of a family can be identified by the clothes it is wearing.
The next most important place in a home is the kitchen. And this is one place where MCH economising finds ample scope. For example, you want to extract up to the last “e” in filter coffee. For this, MCHs make three to four extracts of the same coffee grounds with hot water. If you blend all the extracts carefully, the same amount of coffee powder will stretch for one more cup. As for getting all the milk and cream out of milk packets, you rinse off the packets with a bit of hot water. If you don’t want to dilute the milk, you let the packets sit for a while to let the milk settle and you pour it out again. This way, you can get a whole 0.0045 litre (4.5 ml) more, which, at today’s milk price, is not something to be sneezed at! And don’t forget the used milk packets, either. These can be sold to recyclers and yield a little something to the household kitty.
There are many more household tips to save resources. One is to use medium sized plates to serve food — the quantity appears more. Use small serving spoons and serve small amounts — nobody is going to ask for fifths. When making ghee rice, you don’t have to use too much ghee; if you add a spoonful at the very end, which gives it a great flavour, you can reduce the quantity by half. Use potatoes to swell a dish, and rice flour to thicken sambhars. If, at dinner time, there is not enough of both the rasam and the sambhar, marry the two to create a larger volume. The list goes on.
It has to be noted that the kitchen is where inflation has hit the hardest. In the old days, cooks would use a lot of daal and tamarind to add taste to dishes. Onions were used as filler veggies along with tomatoes, so that, in a peas curry, you would find more onions and tomatoes than peas, since peas were expensive. Now that the veggies despised as cheap fillers are expensive themselves, your average householder is scrambling to find alternatives. The MCH is where real, normal Indian life happens. INAV