Hilarious reels, memes and tweets on tomatoes flood social media platforms

Visakhapatnam: There were memes and reels on Covid-19 pandemic, work from home culture, freebies that political parties shower with ahead of elections, soaring onion price and fuel rates, among plenty of others.

The recent one that is flooding social media platforms is soaring tomato prices followed by the struggle experienced by consumers in sourcing them. Even while food bloggers share tips on how to store the kitchen staple for weeks and months in zip-lock bags, a few others exchange best practices on incorporating alternatives such as gooseberry, tamarind and lemons in the daily menus that exclude tomatoes.

From short videos that present the value of tomatoes higher than gold to comparison of ‘Kokapeta’ land price with ‘tomato thota’ and presenting tomatoes to the lady of the house instead of gold ornaments have been circulated on social media platforms in the recent past. In another video, a woman gives Rs.20 to her husband to buy tomatoes but he returns with just two tomatoes.

Initially, when the tomato cost went up, the price-conscious consumers sliced the quantity of tomatoes incorporated in their daily cooking. However, with a kg of tomatoes costing more or less to a kg of chicken now, people now prefer to exclude the vegetable from the daily menu charts. “We never thought that we would be shelling an equal amount for tomatoes as we spend for a kg of chicken. Although we bought tomatoes at subsidised cost at Rythu bazaars for the past weeks, we have to wait for hours in the queue line to bring home the commodity. Buying tomatoes in an open market has become unaffordable as a kg of the vegetable is sold for over Rs 200,” laments G Krishna Prasad, an entrepreneur at HB Colony.

For those who are largely dependent on buying tomatoes at subsidised price from Rythu bazaars, the long waiting hours in the queue turn out to be an arduous exercise, especially during peak hours. While horticulture experts recommend staggered tomato cultivation to make the crop available for a longer period, few others suggest ways to bring down the demand of the commodity. “When the price of tomatoes goes up, people should completely stop using them and go for an alternative. When the demand for the commodity drops, the price will eventually be stabilised over a period of time. Such practice is followed in a few foreign countries,” hints K Varahalu, estate officer of Marripalem Rythu bazaar. In Twitter, hashtags such as #tomatoprice, #tomato have been circulating with a variety of humour-laced memes and tweets that highlight the caption ‘not only onion but tomato also can bring tears’.