Economies on Rice.

On a sultry summer evening, with the humdrum humming of the ceiling fan coping up with a low voltage, as the background score:

A live and let live policy seemed to have established itself wordlessly in the household.

Both mother and daughter are deep into their magazines, daughter curled up on a chair with a film review; mother squatting on the floor, lost in a vernacular women’s weekly.

The head of the family, reading the moods of his subjects, cautiously mutes the TV, and is mentally transported to the cricketing stadium, replete with lights, action, dancing girls, crying sportsmen, slaps and claps; but sans the sound effects.

Peace prevails.

Mother suddenly looks up from her tips-for-anything-and-everything magazine and says “You should get this special herbal rice for me, they say it is good for keeping down blood sugar levels.”

Father, his eyes still glued to a swashbuckling Dhoni, replies in all earnestness, “Oh no! If you should start consuming like this, then food prices in USA would hit the sky. Then my niece in Virginia would face the brunt. Bush was right. The Indian middle class sure has a growing appetite.”

Daughter chuckles as mother makes another entry in her growing list of unsettled scores.