Environmental Black Holes – Part III

Can you recollect the lunch & dinner menu, your mother made for you, about thirty or forty years before? It must have been a very simple fare but full of nutritional values. One thing that surely was missing from the menu was any kind of sweet dish. Common people enjoyed sweets only during festivals and special occasions like birthdays. If a child had a sweet tooth, at the most  he might get a fruit or mango slice conserved in sugar syrup. However, all this was before the ‘Amul’ milk revolution in India. As milk production went up, milk processors started coming out with many new products. Major varieties of these happened to be very enticing kind of sweets. With better cold storage facilities, the availability went on improving. Even your street corner grocer, started stocking on these. Well! I am not complaining about the sweets any way. I have a sweet tooth myself. Why I have given this example at length is to illustrate how improved availability of a delicacy improves its popularity and skyrockets its consumption.

Environmental Black Holes – Part II

Last year, my daughter brought a wooden chest of drawers, which she thought could also be used as a changing station for the baby. The cabinet was very elegant with matching handles and smooth cherry coloured finish. She was rather pleased about the price, which was quite low, considering the quality of workmanship. Few months later, the elder sibling of the baby, who incidentally was just 3 years old then, decided that the nice handles on the drawers could as well be used as some sort of gymnastic gear. I am sure that there is nothing unusual in this story. Unusual happened later, when the wooden drawers, on which the kid was swinging and stretching, just broke into two pieces. My daughter was very irritated with this and contacted the supplier. He was rather philosophical and regretted the event. He felt that since the drawers were made from MDF and were to be used for storage and not for gymnastics, even when the performer was a 3-year-old amateur, his warranty does not cover this misuse.  There was nothing else to do except throw that junk into garbage.

Environmental Black Holes – Part I

Few days back, I was visiting one of these Super stores, which sell almost everything from a toothpick to Refrigerators. On any day, these Mega stores always have super deals for some item or another. That day, the offer was for their ‘Own house brand’, blue Jeans at a rock bottom price of US$ 16(About 750/- Indian Rupees). As I knew that one of the largest weaving mills for blue Denim is located in India, out of curiosity, I asked a friend of mine to check the price of Denim cloth manufactured by this weaver and the price of Blue Jeans, manufactured by him for Indian market. I was astounded to learn that the prices in India, for this cloth and the garments, were much higher than the super deal offered by this Mega store. Even assuming, a large trade commission, it was obvious that the blue Jeans were being offered at very low profit or may be even at a marginal loss.