The Missus, who has occasionally made an appearance on these pages, always makes time to read these missives, bless her generous heart. I’m glad to report that they always go down well, and manage to elicit a hearty chuckle on most occasions, a very pleasing sound in general and particularly so when one is the underlying cause.
However, just the past week or so, she had a question. Regular readers may remember the column (Archaeology, The Modern Edition) in which I took our dear old PMC to task for the endless hours of fun and frolic they have created on Senapati Bapat Road, and the suggestion I made about a board being put up at the site, detailing the start date, the end date and other necessary details.
Why, the Missus inquired, did I think it necessary to stipulate that the cost must also be mentioned? And therein, dear readers, lies the tale that is this week’s column.
Now, I am, as I have mentioned before and will hold to be true until my dying breath, a proud Puneri. I love and am proud about all that my city has to offer, including its warts. And one of our warts, I must manfully admit, is being tightfisted with the cash.
No, no, quell those howls of protest, and down with the counterexamples. We spend more reluctantly than the rest of the country, and that is a fact.
The next time you see a guy on a two wheeler wearing a plastic bag on his head instead of a proper cap, imagine me saying QED.
A friend of mine, who shall remain unnamed, exemplified this better than anyone else in recent memory. Said friend had relocated to Trumpistan some years ago, and is therefore, it is safe to assume, raking in the doubloons. He was in town recently, and as is the wont of the members of Recently Returned to Des tribe, visiting all the old haunts.
One of these haunts happened to be a chai tapri from the days of yore. Chai was had, encomiums were issued, and the small matter of payment remained.
“Dus rupaye”, said the hardworking member of the proletariat.
A friendly reminder is necessary at this point. This, remember, is a person who has been earning in dollars for over three years.
“Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?!”, said the representative from the bourgeois. “How much!”, he continued, his eyes temporarily having extended some inches beyond their sockets. “Am I paying for myself, or for all assembled here?”
“Is it” he continued heatedly, “your wedding on this auspicious day, or are you laboring under the assumption that it is mine? Ten rupees!”
He had to be led away from the scene, apoplectic to his core, for fear of heart failure if he continued to ventilate on the scene. And even today, if the topic is brought up, he is likely to make his German manufactured vehicle swerve sharply on those broad American roads.
And that, dear reader, is why in my humble opinion, the cost of the project must be mentioned on that board. Because we may live with delayed projects and work of shoddy quality. But tell us that our tax money (and xyz crores of it!) is being spent on this project, and watch collective heart failure, all at once. We’ll be auditing that project with specially imported toothcombs for years, believe me.
Well, maybe. It depends.
How much are those imported toothcombs for anyways?
He doesn't expect the paradox to be resolved in his lifetime
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