Yuktahaar – Appetite’s Best Friend

I never knew what delicious food was until I started eating in Yuktahaar, and then it was too late to know. Well, I do not exactly believe in the crap I wrote in the previous line but I find it funny, so I put it there and let it remain there in the final draft of this piece of writing.

Now that I’ve mentioned that I eat in Yuktahaar, you must have speculated that it is one place where food is served. People from IIIT would know what I am talking about, but for those not familiar with the campus, I’d state that it is one of the four messes in our college. The food is really cheap ( at least in terms of the amount they charge us per meal ) and you have to sit on the floor and eat, not to mention that people who eat there are supposed to wash the dishes themselves. How’s that for economy? In fact, one of my companions who eats in Yuktahaar – Mayank Juneja – once suggested, “Dude, since we wash the dishes daily, why don’t we seriously consider working here, at least we won’t be paying for our meals.” My reply was, “Seriously chum. We could use the money too.”

Now that I’ve disclosed the royal treatment of the people who eat there, I better not conceal the fact that people love the place so much that there’s always a mile long queue for chapatis. I never used to eat rice before, but rice and I are two inseparable lovers now. And Murphy’s law applies here as well: the more the haste you’re in, the longer the queue is and the slower it moves. The love for the place doesn’t simply end there : there’s another half a mile queue at the sinks to wash the dishes. It is an ultimate test of one’s patience. Once my patience was really being put to a tough test and I blurted out, “ I can stand for an hour in a queue to get a blasted chapati but I cannot stand in this queue for 5 minutes to wash the goddamned dishes.” However the benevolent mother nature made me wait for another 10 minutes and I passed the test. I’ve grown a lot more patient since Yuktahaar became a part of my life. After that incident even the petty insolent kid who stuck a pencil in my eye failed to get on my nerves.

Once someone asked me if the cooks in Yuktahaar were good. My reply was, “ Are you kidding? They sure know how to prepare something fit for human consumption by means of heat.” Ask anyone who eats there and he will testify the truth of my statement. I must tell you that it is not only good food that is served there, for it is one such place where you learn while you eat. Don’t ask me what it means: I leave the interpretation as an exercise left to the reader.

There are quite a few quotes that adorn the walls of the temple of diet. I’ll list a few of them with my remarks. Don’t hate me, I’m not being judgmental- I’m merely putting myself in the shoes of a common man – who ate there once – and stating his observations subjectively.

Quote 1: “Enjoy health not taste.”
Remarks: “ You’ve ensured the second conjecture. But what about the first?”

Quote 2: “Wasting food is a sin, not allowed here.”
Remarks: “What’s that steel bucket with all the waste food doing there? Did you not put that there? Irony! ”

Quote 3: “Please take a maximum of 3 chapatis if queue is present.”
Remarks: “ Can anyone not see the queue? Or is it that I’m hallucinating all these people standing one behind the other?”

Quote 4: “ The remedy of a disease is the kitchen, not the hospital.”
Remarks: “Kiss my a**.”

I love Yuktahaar- I eat there all the time. Everyone loves Raymond. Everyone loves Yuktahaar. Noticed the analogy? People have their terms of endearment to refer to Yuktahaar, some call it Muktahaar and some call it Kuttahaar. In fact there’s a community dedicated to Yuktahaar on Orkut . Please join it and show that you are as much in love with it as everyone else it.

Everyone should eat in Yuktahaar at least once, after all happiness is not everything.

Stop Wasting Petrol !!

Hi folks, though most of my posts have had a hint of intended humour in them, in doing so I don’t intend to disregard some of the serious issues that we should address but we fail to, because of the common  myth that they are not our concern.

            The other day I happened to be part of a discussion on the so called failure of the Central Government to curb inflation. The problem with most people in India is that they believe – in a Democratic Nation – it is their birthright to criticise the Government without any factual or statistical knowledge. I once read somewhere a statement enunciated by Bal Gangadhar Tilak. It said, “Be true in your facts and be just in your criticism.” And the message struck home the moment I read it. If we abide by this rule of the thumb, a lot of our problems could be understood, if not solved, for understanding the problem is fundamental to its solution. Drifting back to the discussion, a lot of emphasis was reposed on the hike of petroleum products. People were blaming the Government for being incompetent and even claimed that the only solution was a change in the Government. I understood at once that people were choosing the easy way out, choosing to fix the blame rather than fixing the problem, for the simple reason that it required the least effort on their part. Speaking without thinking or foreknowledge is what some people are best at. However I chose to listen rather than speak, for my opinions were different and I wanted to do some research to find out the statistically accurate figures before concluding anything.

            I had read in novels long ago that the world was facing a power crisis and the situation was bound to worsen over the years. The conventional resources of energy were waning away and only the nascence of a new source could bring about some respite. But I was not sure of the current state of things. Therefore, I did tad research and did some calculations, which a sixth grader can efficiently perform. I’ll show you the stepwise calculations.

            Oil is internationally traded in New York and London and denominated in US Dollars only. Crude oil is distributed in barrels which hold 42 gallons of oil ( when converted into litres comes to about 159 litres per barrel). The petrol content of crude oil is about .48 litres per litre. Excise, taxes and raw material refining also add to the cost of petrol per litre.

 

Cost of a 159 litre barrel of crude oil (as on 3^rd July) :  US $145

1 US Dollar = 42.975 Indian Rupees ( as on 11^th July )

 

Cost of a 159 litre barrel of crude oil in Rupees : 145 x 42.975 = Rs. 6231.375

Petrol content of a barrel : 159 x .48 = 76.32 litres

 

Cost of 1 litre petrol = 6231.375 / 76.32 =  Rs. 81.65

 

Taxes, refining costs and transport etc. amount to about another 10 rupees per litre

 

Therefore, the effective cost of petrol per litre is about Rs. 92

 

I hope nobody had any problem understanding my calculation. As it is evident, our country gets petrol at Rs. 92 per litre and we get it at say Rs.54 per litre. Obviously the Government is incurring a huge loss by paying a subsidy of about Rs. 38 per litre. And we blame the Government for not being able to control inflation.

What we do is misuse petrol and put more and more pressure on our Government by increasing the loss incurred by it. We cause our nation to be poor and put the blame on our economic policies.

                 This is just one chapter of the whole story. This is just about oil. There are various other fronts where we are weakening our nation, with our not-my-business and I-don’t-care attitudes. If we make efforts to understand the root of our problems, we might be able to actually contribute to the solution of them.