Let’s Ask For That Change

Everyone is talking about change now a days. They are all asking change in public utilities, change in government policies, change in climatic conditions, change in society  and change in perceptions. I am also concerned about change. I am concerned about my change. The change that I deserve. The change they have robbed me of. The change that they all owe me.

I read newspaper (worth Rs.3) every day. World economy is facing a slowdown. US economy is still hanging on a balance. Euro zone is in pits. But guess what - Indian economy is thriving. Ah! don’t believe what the share markets or industry experts tell you. They don’t know what is happening in India since they are busy - shouting all day. Don’t trust the local traders as well because they are also busy shouting. They are shouting the trading rates of shares, bonds and commodities. And they are so busy shouting that no one has the time to wonder where these commodities are going or who is buying them. Well, I am buying them.

And it so happens that after all the shouting and ding-dong in the mandi (market where pulses (worth Rs. 42), vegetables etc. are sold), I buy some potato (worth Rs. 31), a little tomato (worth Rs.21 ) and one onion (worth Rs. 4). Onions have become really expensive for me to buy now, you see. “Chappan rupya hua hai!,” cried the vegetable monger (Rs. 56 in total). I hand him Rs. 60 and wait for my change. Keeping the notes firmly in one of his wooden boxes the monger started helping another customer with his vegetables. After a lull of about 5 seconds, he looked up at me. I looked back at him. His ‘look’ changed to frown followed by my own burrowed frown. Only when his expression turned into quizzical that I demanded my change. The vegetable monger was horrified. The customer-in-waiting besides me gave me a how-cheap look. Fed-up of all these twisted faces, I decided to leave the place with dignity (worth Priceless).

These people have now devised strategies to steal my change. They tag their services with prices such as Rs. 399 or Rs. 1099. Now when I give them 100 rupee notes, they slyly rob me of that 1 rupee extra I give them. They are all in this together and they are all out to make me poorer by not giving back the change.

I remember the good old time when nobody was really worried about the economy or about inflation or rising petrol prices (worth Rs. 73). Times like these, I had to beg at home for a rupee to buy even an ice-cream gola (worth Rs. 1). You had to fight with the rickshaw wallahs for every 2 rupees. These were good times - since there was no 500 rupee note, people always had change.

Today, people have devised new methods to loot people of their change. Not two but three shining examples of this phenomenon that has caught up with all general store owners and others:

1    You go to a store and buy a Sneakers chhoti waali (worth Rs. 15) and give the owner Rs. 20. He always tries to sell me a Five Star chhoti waali (worth Rs. 5) along with it to avoid giving me the change. He wants to eat away at my 5 rupees! I could buy a coke chhoti waali in 1998 with 5 rupees.

2    I ordered a few books from an online store. The books cost me 1057 rupees and I gave 1060 rupees to the delivery boy. The guy took the money and left. No sir! Not even a word about 3 rupee change.

3    Once travelling in a city bus, the conductor in the bus told me that I can take the 8 rupees in change the ‘next time’ I board the same bus. How kind of him. But how will I find the same bus in 1000s of other buses in the city is a still a riddle to me.

The worst part is – you cannot, you just cannot ask for the change. Because if you do, you are labelled as cheap. People in the city bus stare at me if I ask for my own change. Grocery store owners talk to me with contempt once they come to know that I won’t take a candy for the change they owe me. Nobody wants to talk about the change they have to give me back.

I beg of these people to watch and study share markets, US economy news, Euro zone crisis, recession, inflation and everything that is making me poorer and give me back my change. This Diwali, with Goddess Lakshmi as my witness, I took an oath to always ask for my change. I don’t care if it is humiliating to ask my own money back. I don’t want that extra five star with the Sneakers. I just want my change back!

When I was little, I used to maintain a piggy bank where I used to store all the change that I got from the once honest shop owners.  And whenever it was full I used to break it with anticipation, counting how much money I had collected. And it used to be sufficient to buy unlimited candies. Now there is no piggy bank. All that is left is a bank and a credit card which I use to avoid being robbed of any change only to look with the same anticipation and a little dread at my credit card bills.

It’s been years now since I last held that shining one rupee coin or a little heavy five rupee coin. But I often wonder that if I don’t have change, if my friends don’t have it and the shopkeepers don’t have it then who owns the change that all of them owe me. I promise, anyone telling me where my change is will get all the change owed to him. So, here is to bringing about that change because change is our wallet’s right and we shall have it.

Flyting too high – Flying a little too low

There are two things I see every day:

1.       The standoff between KFA and its employees on the overdue payment of salaries in the daily newspaper.

2.       A huge poster of Siddharth Mallya smiling sheepishly out of a ‘Hunt for Kingfisher Calendar Girl’ poster.

KFA (Kingfisher Airlines) was a birthday gift from Vijay Mallya to his son Siddharth. And he has managed to do what every kid in the block would do with his birthday gift- flaunt it to his friends, play with it and then utterly bored let it rot in a corner. The interesting fact in this case being that both father and son happily played with it and then decided to take a vacation on some exotic island.

Vijay Mallya, without any doubt, is quite an icon. With his flashy lifestyle, Nirma washed white jackets and scantily clad girls giggling around him, he has been able to do what no Aditya Birla or a Ratan Tata could ever achieve – gain a paparazzi. And his son followed right into the big and hairy footsteps of his father by dating a super model actress and going right ahead and kissing her during an IPL match. Now this begs me to reminisce the news I read a couple of years ago. Remember ‘Operation Majnu’ in U.P. where girls and boys were rounded up by police and beaten up for being ‘indecent’. I am sure some policemen watching that match might have realized that the suave Mr. Mallya Jr. is quite some ‘Majnu’ himself.

I must tell you that I, along with a lot of 20s something sincerely revere Mr. Mallya Sr. for his contribution to the liquor industry by making some of the cheapest brands in alcohol and making all of us falling in love with the Kingfisher bird on their logo. Some of us even went ahead and sang songs of merriment which went like ‘Oo La La La La Le E O’ (Or was It.. Le Le Lo!). We were hurray to the king of good times till he was serving us some cheap and nice beer. But then one day, probably Lord Brahma appeared in Mr. Mallya’s dreams and he got all sober and started buying air planes. The next day to reaffirm his devotion he bought some cars and called them ‘Force India’. And just the other day he bought a cricket team with some cheerleaders and pit girls who came free of cost because Virat Kohli was playing for them.

In the mean time, when he was busy buying all these stuffed toys for himself and his son, he forgot that he had also hired a staff that he has to pay. It was a sad day when the wife of one of his employee committed suicide after the KFA fiasco due to enormous economic constraints. It was sadder that Mallya Jr. decided to tweet about his bikini volleyball match on the same day. I am sure that the combined cost of travel and living expenses of father-son duo would have been sufficient to feed that family for atleast a month. But obviously there is no time to ponder over these facts when there is an F1 race coming.

“No one likes him but everyone wants to live like him,” said one admirer. I agree. Who wouldn’t want to live like him. When you have a personal yacht, a jet and numerous properties all around the world, you would be envied and looked up to. Though today, it is an entirely different situation when the people looking up at him are ones who have not been paid by him for last 7 months. Their condition is desperate. Many had to move their families because they could not afford the expenses. Many had to re-register their kids in different schools. And where is Mr. Mallya all along? You and I can only guess..

 You can enjoy the vacations Mr. Mallya Sr. and Jr. and being citizens of this great nation where the rich remain rich, we know that you will pour Champaign on Kingfisher calendar launch for years to come but remember that that one Champaign could have saved the life of that unfortunate woman whose husband was a little more unfortunate to be employed by you. He lost his job and then his wife. Bad times have just begun I guess. Not for you, obviously.

An Open Letter to Mr. Arvind Kejriwal

Keeping up with the trend of writing open letters to ‘celebrities’, here is an open letter to Mr. Kejriwal.

Dear Mr. Kejriwal,

I must begin by saying that unlike you I do not belong to any political party and do not support one as well (both openly and discreetly). I am, much like you, a humble citizen of this great nation who dreams of a united and corruption free India.

Let me also clarify that I used to be a great fan of your’s (and Anna Hazare’s) movement against corruption till I realized that it was becoming an everyday affair for you guys to stage an agitation or sit on a hunger strike. So, like many other enthusiastic youngsters shouting away how they love their country, I too got bored. You, obviously realized to a very thankful stomach of yours that even the public is bored of too many of these strikes and the anti-government agenda. So one fine day, you had a great lunch and called it all off.

In my opinion, the entire Anna Hazare team should be lauded for bringing a social and everyday evil like corruption on the national stage. But one must question, like many a leaders have, where do I stop agitating and do something about it. Because after all we too, the common man (or should I say the Mango people) are involved in this corruption. Don’t we want to pay that extra hundred to a cop to let us go when we cross that signal or a couple of more hundred when we don’t wear our seat belt? Don’t we bribe an RTO officer to push our application on top of the stack? Or don’t we give an expensive gift to that bank employee when we want a loan approval?

Mr. Kejriwal, since I am a common man like you and Mr. Prashant Bhushan, believe me I am not concerned if Kalmadi is swimming in crores of rupees or if A. Raja allocated some spectrum (my phone bills are still same) or if Kanimozhi bought her way out of jail. Yes, it hurts me to see these people I have chosen to power behaving irresponsibly but then you see, Mr. Kejriwal, I had no option. It was either Congress or BJP or some other obscure regional party. It was like taking a pick from Mayawati or Mulayam and Karunanidhi or Jayalalitha. And you might just whisper it in hushed voices and never say it aloud, but all these parties are full of corrupt people. So, I thought let me vote Congress and see if they can do better. Sadly, they couldn’t.

It is then that people like you – educated, good orators and people with a will to change the society decide to form political parties. If you notice the fathers of our political movement, leaders like Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru or Sardar Vallabhai Patel, they too dreamt of a great nation and formed political parties without realizing that it would take just 60 years to turn that nation into a market of corrupted politicians. Still I would respect them as politicians because they had a broad and vast horizon of thinking and planning. But Mr. Kejriwal, I am sure you realize that there are scores of other problems plaguing this great nation and corruption is just one amongst them. How do you expect me to find a leader in you when you have no say in any other matter besides corruption. Why don’t you talk about Kashmir issue, Telangana issue or say the FDI or how do you plan to improve the educational system in India or how would you bring about health care reforms. All you do is go around Delhi protesting with people who are now equally jobless.

You, Mr. Kejriwal, along with Mr. Bhushan decide to talk about one Robert Vadra. Again, you have to trust me, I don’t care about Vadra or his dealings with DLF and you know why? Because LPG prices just got inflated by Rs. 11. And that is a bigger concern for me and mango people. But let’s say, you have our best interest at heart and you want to save tax payer’s money (Please note that ‘Mango people’ are creating fake identities to save taxes from government and this is just one way they are duping on the taxes), then why in the world do you wait for a day to reveal that ‘extra information’ that you have. It prompts me to question your motive. Is it sensationalism in the media you want to create or are you just playing with our minds? Do you want to say, “Let these guys wait for a day. Let them churn their brains before I make my grand revelation infront of the lenses.” Well, let me congratulate you because you have achieved exactly what you wanted - create a national celebrity out of you.

You have a vision of a great nation Mr. Kejriwal. Don’t let it be obscured in petty media gimmicks because I am sure you know that there are people sitting on hunger strikes in North East who don’t make a huge cry about it. There was also, recently a sadhu who died on the bank of Ganges trying to protest against the impurities the mango men dump in it every day. The government did nothing in their case as well. But has it done anything in yours? Those people atleast did not make a fool of themselves by calling off the hunger strike and then forming a political party. They died for their cause, sir. Please take a moment and let it sink in.

I am sure you are not offended by me calling the people of India (including me) as mango men. It might be a slang for some but for me it is a namesake. We are all so seasonal and we so depend on some good rain, in the end just to be eaten by animals or if we are lucky an educated man who will peel us before eating.

Regards,

A Mango Man