For centuries it faced a serious identity crisis. In spite of being an integral component in a wide range of culinary delicacies, it seldom got the importance it so rightly deserved. It doesn’t have any hang ups and can easily gel with almost everyone. Unlike many other items of its ilk, it does not perform the disappearing act during specific seasons. A loyalist to the core it is always in thick and thin in the kitchen. It may not have a rhino hide but has acquired the ability to endure all the negative adjectives which it is subjected to. Be it a potato figure, couch potato, an identity-less person like a potato... The potato seldom gets the care and attention from the vegetable vendor which other items get while displaying it for sale. In spite of being an indispensable ingredient, the ubiquitous potato took all the insults heaped on it in its stride.

However, its long association with the onion had finally changed the mindset of the dear old potato. It desperately wanted to seek an identity of its own and to command the respect which was long over due. And what it failed to achieve in centuries, it managed to do it within a matter of months.

Now the potato has taken the market by storm and it commands respect. The vegetable vendor takes special care to display it while the buyers too view it with awe. With money being the only yardstick to measure success, potato too realized that only way to be successful and to get noticed is to hike ones price throwing all proprieties to the wind. Engineering some deft marketing moves, today the potato has emerged as a market leader among its ilk.

The sudden spurt in potato prices has not only send the market in tailspin, its ramifications are resounding in the entire society as well. The market analysts are a confused lot. What has happened to the classical demand and supply theory? The market is flooded with potatoes, yet its prices are defying the laws of gravity.

In the society too the potato has become the new status symbol. Without investing in flashy cars, opulent mansion, one can easily flaunt one’s economic status just by buying potato from the market without haggling over its price. To get special attention in a restaurant or in a fast food joint ordering a special potato dish is more than enough.

Now one can also get his pending works done, add motion to the files or motivate an officer to get the work done by simply gifting a few kilograms of potatoes. As an alternative currency now potato is doing very well. Even in social functions now potato has became a raging gift item. Trying cash on the new found status of the potato some innovative designers are toiling hard to make potato ear rings, necklaces, potato laced dresses et al.

The skyrocketing prices have put the authorities in a spot of bother. Worried the potato prices would make the people aware of its incompetence, the government has decided to set up a special ministry — ‘potato control ministry’ that would be headed by a minister having a cabinet rank.

But in spite of all its success the potato is still as despondent as ever. The reason: the pink staple of our diet — the onion continues to mock it. The onion haughtily goes on bragging that it its prices had once managed to electrify the masses and the opposition parties alike. It became an issue and was instrumental in changing a government. But no one till now has taken up the poor old potato as an electoral or political issue!

Manish Goswami