Column

April Fool's Day came and went very circumspectly this year. No major pranks, no great imagination shown.

I know, I know, the cynics will say it's because in this country democracy tries to fool all of the people all of the time. Still. Maybe it was all this talk about inflation! Rising prices! Mangoes for Rs100! And the rest of it.

If you are foolish enough to want to eat mangoes in March, you deserve to pay Rs100 a mango. No one has behaved so foolishly since the Arabs used to stay in all our hotels and eat all our mangoes for ridiculous prices in the 1980s.

Our newspaper gave us Upen Patel disrobed, but not dishabille. Many ladies, despite their mock horror, may not have been fooled so easily and may have now found some interesting bedroom wallpaper. Ladies? It's April 5, so the time to officially lie and get away with it is over.

The time to lie in the real estate industry is never over, though. No one's buying, registrations are down, flats are lying empty and yet builders and developers quote exorbitant prices to those who timorously venture out to buy or rent in such a climate. Amazing.

Perhaps you have to admire the courageousness of the buyer and the audacity of the seller. Was it a Mumbaikar who said, “There's a sucker born every minute” and not circus emperor BT Barnum? All right, it was Barnum, but you can easily spot a sucker on the streets of Mumbai: He’s the one who’s just bought a flat and is sucking on a mango.
b_ranjona@dnaindia.net