Did you say cholesterol?

“Be sure not to eat too much meat.”

“Why not?

“Well, you know, you have to watch out this cholesterol thing…”

“What! I’ve been waiting for months for a bite of some quality protein and you tell me to watch out what!”

Not long back few, if any, knew what this cholesterol thing is all about. These days, you get anywhere close to meat products maybe a couple of times a month and still someone throws the cholesterol scare at you. First things first, and these days meat is becoming so expensive even that elusive ‘middle class’ sees it not as a dietary must but as some sort of luxury.

This holiday season was no different. I mean they asked an average of five hundred Birr for a chicken that looks so ‘sad’ you feel guilty picking up the knife in its presence. I’m a second-rate shopper and even the worst bargainer. So, whenever I’ve to go to a market where your bargaining skills make or break your day, I make sure a friend of mine, a gloves-off bargainer, is at hand. He does the heavy-lifting and I enjoy the spoils. The rare times I go it alone, I literally get mugged.

Here is how things play out; the calling price for some item is, “Five hundred Birr; and that is final.” Poor, I try to soften-up the trader with a sentence or two. “That’s too expensive for me.”

“Ok, I’ll do this just for you; take it for four hundred and seventy Birr!”

Bingo! I did it! That’s how my gold-medal performance goes. I’m my own cheerleader; “That’s my boy! You really hit the bull’s eye; didn’t you?” So, as if I disproved everything the Adam Smith guy wrote, I go away triumphant and proud of my exceptional deal-making abilities. The World Bank guys owe me an apology; you don’t ignore someone with my ability. I convinced an Addis trader to slash thirty Birr! Even better, I conned the guy off thirty Birr! Of course, had I been smart enough the question should have been how, a guy who didn’t even know I existed does anything ‘just for me!’ Never said I was that smart. Ha!

Then there is my friend. The trader says, “Four hundred Birr; and that is final.” My friend, without any preliminaries or waiting for the opening bell goes into attacking mode; “Two hundred Birr. Take it or leave it.” The trader should have said, “Leave my shop or else…” before threatening to pounce all lover my friend. No, he wouldn’t do that. He starts sliding ten Birr at a time. Finally, he agrees to give it away, hold your breath, for two hundred Birr! Even then my friend wouldn’t be satisfied; “We could have gotten it for one hundred fifty.”

Sometimes back a group of us were talking about the cost of living. In fact, we weren’t talking, we were complaining. Virtue or vice, ours has become a nation of complainers. The guy toying with a five hundred thousand Birr car complained as loudly as the fellow who got his most recent new pair of shoes five years back. I mean, for those of us a stone’s throw away from the breadline, a half-million Birr car owner complaining is sacrilege! What more does he want! A Dreamliner!

“Where is the middle class?”

“What! What do you mean by the middle class?”

“I mean those on the economic fence, neither poor nor rich.”

‘Have you read about the dinosaurs?”

“You bet I have.”

“Now you know where much of what used to be the middle class is!”

Believe me, such a dialogue isn’t farfetched. Well, one sure thing is that many who thought they were on that safe ground known as middle class are discovering the books are being rewritten. Listen forget your academic stuff. The conventional wisdom among us, confused souls is that if you aren’t up there, you are down there. Nothing ‘quantum’ about that!

So being in times when we are being muscled into vegetarianism, a meal or two of meat products every month or so can’t cardinal sin!