‘Inflation stands at 7.5%’ screamed the headlines and the TV channels promptly went overboard displaying the pundits of economics shaking their heads and clucking their tongues, falling over themselves in trying to educate us, the common masses about the effects of inflation. Bah! I tell myself, who wants to listen to old men and their dreary tales? Let me turn my eyes onto pleasanter things, Govinda partnering the macho Salman Khan for instance.

The next day  saw me gaze with disbelief at the pitiful collection of vegetables that I managed to get in exchange for a handful of Gandhiji etched currency notes. It seemed such a criminal waste to alter their chemical composition by cooking. Don’t they deserve a place of pride in my bank locker instead?  Forlorn & miserable I turn to my only source of solace. Yeah! You guessed right, the idiot box.

What have we here? The Bushman from the world of Uncle Sam is shaking his head at the greedy Indians. It’s okey to become prosperous, he explained, but why do you want better nutrition? Dontcha know that your demand has triggered off a food crisis and we Yankees have to do without our daily bread oops burger! 

Aaila! I didn’t know that the Indian middle class were more in number than the population of the entire USA. And to think that they are snatching the food from the mouth of the starving Americans! How horrible!  Isn’t India an ancient civilization? And aren’t old people supposed to eat less? So all you citizens of the age-old culture, banish the thought of having two square meals a day. Opt for a triangular meal instead. A wedge of Pizza, anyone?J Will Bush be Khush now? I wonder.

Mark Twain had once said that “India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only.”

So here's some grandmotherly advice to the country No 1 from its Naani (the country No. 91). Americans will do themselves and the world a favour if they remind themselves that one eats to live – and does not live to eat. Once they do this, food shortage will automatically lessen. The world is already paying a heavy price for the what the Americans have done till date, however well meaning they may be. Is a certain Mr G.W. Bush listening?