The Mystery Month

August 2006 was certainly a mystery month for three protagonists in Rolla. Before I get into the details, let me clarify a few points.

• If somebody comes and asks us how much we spend on an average in Rolla, we will definitely not say that it is about 250$.
  
• If somebody comes and asks us whether there is any possibility of saving with a quarter time, we will trample him.
• If somebody says that Rolla is a small town where you will never spend a penny, send him to us. He desperately needs to talk to us.

All these conclusions stem from the fact that Rama made the monthly calculations for the last three months and ended up giving us devastating figures. Now, let me round up on the mystery month. Rama comes up with these huge grins and expressions when he gets excited, and today morning at 3:30 AM was no different.

Yadu matte Praveena, do you know how much we spent in the month of August? What the hell do we know? We were obviously clueless, and gave out a loose figure of about 250$, the standard figure of Rolla or atleast that's what we unassuming fools thought. Illa Kano! Munnoora Nalavath aidhu dollar (345$) screamed the excited creature. WHAT!!! Yadu and I leapt to our feet. If this was something unexpected, Rama comes up with something all the more unexpected - Oh my God, I forgot to divide by 3. The total amount is divided by 4. By now, I had no guts to listen to what was going to come out of Rama. This was something that was going to get truly unbearable. Ok guys, this is the final figure, it is 460$ for each person here in Rolla. Since we were prepared for the worse, all the three of us now seriously leapt to our feet amidst peals of laughter. Bloody hell!!! All of us are vegetarians and we had no idea for what in the world we were visiting Walmart as if that was the only source of happiness in life for us here at Rolla. Of course, the final figure slightly bettered when we realised that I had fed some wrong data. Better but not great. The figured toned down to 400$. This is bad but luckily atleast we saved 65 hard earned bucks. But somehow, the other months had the figure consistently maintained at 300$. There is another "best" thing about the mystery month. This was the month we were in Utah blowing up few more bucks, and ideally the amount spent at Rolla should have been much lesser than that of the other monthly figures.

We are either gluttons blowing up so much money or we surely must be spending on something which we don't realise. If in India, atleast these figures are understandable or in the worst case, if you have a girlfriend, again these figures are understandable. But, here in No Man's Land, we are bearing the brunt of big bucks!!!!