Opinion Express View on tomato prices memes: Funny side up

If the 1978 parody, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, was a response to the time’s excessive paranoia and militarism, surely the film to be made today would be called Attack of the Killer Tomato Prices. After all, laughter is cheap, even if tomatoes no longer are — breaching the Rs 200 per kilo mark in some places — thanks to a massive shortage.

Not surprisingly, the no-longer-humble tomato’s rise from pantry staple to luxury good has led to a spurt of helpless, good humoured chagrin, most of it expressed in the lingua franca of today: The internet meme. And so friends and family commiserate with each other over photos depicting tomatoes in place of diamonds in jewellery — AAP MP Sushil Kumar Gupta who turned up wearing a necklace of tomatoes in Rajya Sabha this week was clearly on trend — and headlines about people giving the fruit as wedding and birthday gifts and avocados now being more affordable than the tomato. Against the odds, some jokes manage to offer practical solutions, albeit not ones recommended by the faint of heart or chefs with reputations at stake: Heard the one about the family that made rajma with Knorr tomato soup sachets?

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Still, while jokes and memes offer temporary, shared comfort, they’re hardly a replacement for the sun-ripened, sweet-but-tangy flavours of a favourite ingredient that livens up bland dals and enriches curries, from chicken to paneer. With household budgets stretched, restaurants dropping tomato slices from burgers and sandwiches and street side vendors trying to convince their customers that a tomato-less bhelpuri is still bhelpuri, never mind the jokes, even the thought of being able to return from the market with fewer and lighter grocery bags is hardly any consolation. As a widely-shared joke goes, it’s not just onions that are making people cry.