Land of Milk & Honey

Land of Milk & Honey

Not all people, we must admit, are waiting with breath for the achhe din, some as we saw last week are already in the achhe din zone; a few others are already salivating at the prospect of a clear indication that achhe din are but a daybreak away.

Take the case of Ram Prasad Yadav, a Class X student studying in Patna. He is sure that achhe din have arrived. His father has promised him a brand new motorcycle of his choice, if he manages to pass his board exams which are coming up in a couple of months.  You might be tempted to question why Ram Prasad Yadav, an extremely mediocre student who can barely write his own name either in English or Hindi, is so certain about passing his board exams. But then you don’t know Bihar, do you? He has already made jugaad that he will get all the right answers duly supplied to him in the required answer books right through the window of his examination hall, leaving him the onerous task of substituting the answer books. You must be thinking that his father must be very well off to afford such jugaad and the ensuing prize.  Well, think again; he is just a constable in the police force but then with (part) prohibition coming up as promised by Mahagatbandhan it is time for achhe din to arrive with a bang at least for the Yadav family and many more who find themselves in a spot as sweet as he does.

Take the case of Pascal, no friend of mine, but I am sure you would know a Pascal somewhere around you wherever you are. A very enterprising guy who is in the business of upliftment of people’s spirits by, you guessed it, providing them with “spiritual” assistance. True to the honoured tradition of “simple thinking and high living” he has made it his  vocation to help simple people achieve ‘high’ in life which they can otherwise only  dream of.  Of course Pascal has never worried about such mundane things like licenses and taxes etc, but he has always prided himself on the quality of his products. He is now planning to take a trip to Bihar to scout around for suitable joint venture partners who can brew the stuff as per his tried and tested recipes. His elder son Paolo is already looking after the Gujarat franchise and now he has the opportunity to settle his second son Anton in Bihar. What more achhe din can one expect!!!

But then achhe din for some can become burey din for others. Check it out with the liquor shop guys. They feel that life has brought them down by a peg or two. Some of them even felt that they have been properly quartered. The promised achhe din seem to have evaporated into thin air, rather like the contents of their stock-in-trade. So they approached the ‘gubermint’ to sort out the matter. End result was that the liquor shops will now be allowed to sell milk. While this opens up new pastures for dairy industry, the liquor shop owners are sure relieved that they have not been entirely put to grass by Mahagatbandhan.  

One doesn’t know the precise reason for this milk policy, but some may argue that that it has been dictated by the second-in-command in the state cabinet who is probably still sporting his milk-teeth. Or maybe this is a way to get rid of loads and loads of fodder which must still be in the godowns of the first family of Bihar - a legacy of the fodder scam.

My friend Guy Wise, who is also an ardent devotee of Bacchus, feels this stratagem of having both milk and alcohol available at the same counter is nothing but a master stroke to turn Bihar into land of ‘Milk and Honey’ which is precisely the name of a cocktail with exactly the same ingredients.

Cheers. Wish you a Merry Christmas and achhe din in 2016 and may you find your own land of Milk and Honey.

 LazyBee

22nd December 2015.

Of Fables And Fabled Court Cases

Of Fables And Fabled Court Cases

And for another week-end, a few stray thoughts and a few general observations and a few points of view (some of it my own work and some as reported by media):

From Russia comes this tale of love right out of Aesop’s fables. In Vladivastok zoo, Timur, a goat, was pushed into the enclosure of Amur, a tiger, as a live prey for the latter’s mid-day lunch or maybe a mid-night snack (the report is silent on these salient features of Amur’s dietary habits).  Timur, the goat, managed to make friends with Amur. End result? Timur, the timorous, has been sharing his dwellings with Amur who has become a bit amorous towards Timur. One is not aware whether Timur convinced Amur to give up his flesh-eating habits forever or if Timur has developed a sudden distaste for goat meat or if Amur decided that that since Thanksgiving was just over, he should reserve Timur for Christmas or New Year.  

Unfortunately, the news papers which are first to jump on stories like this, tend to keep the reader in complete darkness about the next episodes detailing the progress in such cases. I am sure readers will be keen to know how and when the of love affair between Amur and Timur would end; whether the end comes by zoo authorities granting a reprieve to Timur and removing him from Amur’s enclosure or if finally Timur would get Amur’s goat resulting in Amur finally claiming his goat. Our position is rather like that of Reader A, who finds at the end of page 228 that pages numbering 229 onwards have been maliciously torn away by some sadistic reader, let’s call him B, who happened to have laid his hands on the whodunit under question prior to A’s having done so, leaving A wondering forever if it was indeed the butler who did it or was it the butler’s lookalike second footman who did in the cook in the scullery.    

Elsewhere in the Land of The Setting Son, Master, the bête noir of the Grand Old Party, pulled out another skeleton out of the rickety old cupboard of the erstwhile ruling party heralding another joust of a national battleground. Old Empress and the Prince (both now in wilderness) immediately invoked superwoman powers of Prince’s daadi maa  to fight the evil magic unleashed by the wicked wicked opponents who think nothing about starting a fight over small change of Rs 5,000 crores. Well, now if daadi maa jab yaad aa gayee hai to shayad jaldi hi Prince ko apni naani bhi yaad aa jayegee.

Long awaited judgement in Salman Khan case has come out and against all expectations of people like you and me, the main accused has helped in doing  a Houdini in the “water-tight” case that Mumbai police had claimed they had built up. By popular consensus it has been decided that:

1. The car Salman was traveling in was a proto-type of Google driverless car under beta testing.

2. The car got drunk when it was parked in the parking lot of Marriot.

3. The car wanted to have something to eat (not having been invited by Salman to chai-coffee in the Rainbow Bar, it was obviously very very hungry), so finding American Express Bakery in its sight, the car tried to gatecrash and grab some buns.

QED.  

Now that the case is mort judice (dead in the court, dead by the court and dead for the 

court), my only comment is:  XXXX XXXX XXX.

My friend Guy Wise says, if the judgement had turned out to be anything other than “Not Guilty” he would have lost all faith in power of money. 

It may just be better if we, as a society, decide not to waste our time and energy on frivolous litigations like these dragging on for dozens of years and wasting tax-payers money. I am sure we can utilize these resources better by pursuing cases against ticket-less travellers or some Gram Panchayat officials caught while taking bribes of 10 rupees.  

LazyBee

12^th Dec 2015

Achhe Din - AAP ki Meherbaani

Achhe Din  - AAP ki Meherbaani

It is true that the whole country is still waiting for achhe din. Now, you can either passively wait for the achhe din to arrive or do something which will force achhe din to visit your quarters. The aam aadmi may or may not be in a position to bring home achhe din for himself but Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leadership is surely full of capable guys who can do something about it if they make up their mind. And made up their mind they have. The Delhi State MLAs have unanimously decided that “enough is not enough” and have taken the matters into their hand.

Now AAP leaders are humans like you and me and they feel like all of us that their salaries and perks need a revision (upward, obviously).  Well, honestly nothing wrong with that. Show me anyone who doesn’t feel that he / she is (grossly) underpaid, right from the Class IV employees to the Cabinet Secretary to the Government of India in the babu-land and from trainees on shop-floor to the (professional) Managing Directors in private sector. But not all of us are lucky enough to get our way. Even the mighty Cabinet Secretary has to wait for Pay Commission to recommend revision of pay, something which happens once in 10 long years. He may make his suggestions regarding the revisions that he would like to see, but finally he has to accept whatever decisions are taken.

But all this is for billions of mere mortals like you and me, the Chosen Ones (and who chooses them, mere mortals like you and me) choose to tread a different path. No Pay Commissions for them and no ungainly haggling over rate of inflation and Dearness Allowance for them. Just appoint some “independent committee” headed by a retired bureaucrat who knows which side of the slice of baked dough has a thick layer of golden yellow fat applied to it and who is only too happy to echo His Masters’ Voice.   

MLAs of Delhi Assembly have by an overwhelming majority decided to rectify their penurious status and given themselves a raise which shall hopefully pull them above the poverty line. The MLAs will henceforth get Rs 2.35 lakh per month instead of paltry Rs 88,000 they were getting earlier and thereby maybe just keep the wolf off their doorsteps. Phew. Thank God.

AAP which enjoys a strength of 67 in a house of 70 was expecting that the bill ratifying the proposed amendments to their pay-packets would sail through without any opposition. But the spoilsport BJP MLAs (numbering two) tried to oppose the bill and had to be shouted down. Looks BJP guys themselves don’t believe that achhe din aanewaale hai.  

My friend, Guy Wise, says all this gives a different twist to the classic Lakhnawi tale of two nawabs missing their train in their time-honored protocol, “Pehle aap” ,”Pehle aap” . Here we have a bunch of modern-day nawabs clamouring “Pehle AAP”, “Pehle AAP” as they all jump on the gravy train.

LazyBee

4th December 2015.