With prices of essential food items doubling in the last six months, housewives in Bhopal are cutting corners like never before.
 
At 36 rupees a kilo, sugar is anything but sweet this festive season.
 
Tur dal at 80 rupees and chana dal at 65 rupees a kg seem out of bounds for the aam admi.

As household budgets go awry, housewives are a worried lot.

"What should we eat...everything is so expensive," says Anita, a housewife.

Vegetable and fruit prices have also shot up. A dozen of bananas come for Rs 30 rupees and apples are selling for Rs 100 a kg.  Papaya is relatively cheap at Rs 25 rupees a kg. Potato, a common ingredient in many dishes, has touched a new high of Rs 20-22 a kg.

It's so expensive that now one has to make a separate budget for it, says Ruchi Srivastav, also a housewife.
 
With sugar and rice expected to get costlier, it will only be tougher for aam aadmi.