<i>Living on less</i>

A woman cooking 'vegetable khichuri' for her family in a half-filled pot by the railroad at Karwan Bazar in the capital yesterday.
Photo: STAR

It was 2:00pm, already late for the first meal of the day. Sitting by the Karwan Bazar railway tracks, Marzina Begum was just making preparations to do the cooking for her family of six.
She put chopped cabbages, potatoes and some other vegetables into the pot and then handfuls of rice.
"It's sort of a vegetable khichuri, without lentils," Marzina, a slum dweller, replied when asked what she was preparing.
Pressed further how much rice she has added to the cooking, she said that there is only half kilogram of rice.
"Today I had only Tk 20 and I could not buy more than half kilogram rice with that," said a distressed Marzina. "So I am doing some tricks, cooking vegetables and rice together," she said adding that in that way, it would require less rice.
The touching tale of Marzina is only a fragment of the grim picture of sufferings the poor people have been going through due to the skyrocketing prices of rice, making the staple food dearer with each passing day.
Marzina, who had been living in a 10 feet by six feet small room by the Karwan Bazar railway tracks for years, never needed to employ such "tricks" to satisfy the hunger of her family.
Almost every day she goes out to collect thrown away vegetables and fish to manage meals for the family, as her rickshaw-puller husband Zahid Mia goes about his work.
"Now it is really very hard for us to feed four children.....we never faced such hardships," Marzina added sadly.
While visiting some slums including Begunbari, Kamrangirchar and Karwanbazar yesterday, most of the people were found to be worried about the soaring prices of rice.
Shefali Begum, a resident of Begunbari slum said that they have been cutting down on other expenses to meet the spiked prices of rice and oil.
"Maybe you will not send your kids to school or buy their clothes. But you will have to eat when you are hungry," Shefali said.
"Many of us collect thrown away vegetables from the Karwanbazar wholesale market and still, we are facing problems. I wonder how the dwellers in other slums are managing vegetables after buying rice at such a high rate," she added.
As frustration pervades all around due to the hike in rice prices, many slum dwellers are thronging the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) shops for getting rice at a cheaper rate.
In Kamrangirchar, a long queue was found before the BDR shop at the Kamrangirchar park, which was selling rice at a reduced rate of Tk 25 per kilogram.
More than a hundred people were seen waiting in front of it, some of them for as long as six hours, so that they could save Tk 30 on three kilograms of rice.
"Now nobody gives rice to beggars rather people prefer to hand out Tk 1 or 2," said Rahman Mia, a groundnut vendor, in the university area.
"My family in Bhairab have been asking for more money since the rice price has increased. But my income has not increased," he added gloomily.