The complimentary pickle and slice of lemon with lunch is no longer complimentary, the daily bun maska and chai ritual becomes just a chai ritual and “Guess what, they’ve increased prices again” is the new anthem before every meal. As a student living out of home, you tend to milk the reputation of not having extra money to spend at every turn, be it with a waiter looking for a benevolent tip or a shopkeeper trying to fleece you for the extra buck. Only now, the irony of the reputation is a reality.

Overheard at the cash counter of a popular restaurant was a suggestion that since restaurants are increasing prices ever so often, they use blackboards to display prices, like lottery centres back in the day!

The increase in food prices fluctuated between 3 and 5.6 percent between 2005 and 2007. It hit 7.9 percent in 2008 and further rose to 12.9 percent in 2009. January of 2010 saw it at 19.4 percent. The government says inflation’s been reduced to a few commodities and that the new taxes would have marginal or negligible impact on prices. This just seems too fantastical, almost like their strategy is to just wait it out and see if it solves itself.

My dad says that he too was a student once living out of home and inflation just helps in teaching you how to manage your money better, the argument, albeit a valid one, is a little detached from today’s scenario when my vegetable vendor is my new economics teacher warranting half hour lectures over bargaining for tomatoes once a week. Fuel prices make you think twice about hitting the road, add to that the threat of linking domestic petrol prices to speculation ridden world oil rates, the shortcomings of the public distribution scheme and it tends to get very depressing.

The cascading effects of the rise in inflation rates manifest themselves quiet noticeably, students running short of money switch to earning instead of learning through college.

One such phenomenon having witnessed a substantial increase is the participation in varied inter-collegiate competitions with attractive cash prizes on offer; for e.g. recently an engineering college in Bangalore organised a parliamentary debate competition for teams of three speakers over three days. The winning team members, who also happened to win individual speaker prizes, walked home with a cool fifteen to twenty thousand rupees each! The alternative phenomena undergoing tremendous increase in participation are the plethora of informal gambling tournaments. Held in college hostel rooms or flats occupied by students, there isn’t any real mechanism to curb or even supervise this fast growing practice. What used to be a friendly game of cards between friends has now morphed into ‘practice sessions’ for monthly tournaments that allocate points towards grand prizes over time.

So, is my economy as resilient as the nation’s? With the increasing prices of books (heck, even photocopying drills that hole out of your pocket) and sky rocketing room rents, fuel costs and the price of dal never coming down and all that not translating into an increase in allowance, no, it isn’t. Feels like a college education these days prepares you for the real world a little too soon.