General Thoughts on Many Things

I had a lovely time last week, the week of diwali. I went of to this wonderful wildlife park called the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve, about 3 hours from Nagpur. I sort of went on work. We contract-manufacture a fuel efficient wood burning stove for an American not-for-profit organization which distributes them in Sudan and I wanted to see if the stoves could be used in areas around wildlife reserves such as these.

It turns out, prima facie at least, that the stoves are a great idea. They're very efficient, very inexpensive and virtually everyone in the forested areas uses wood for fuel. Why? Well, for one, wood is easily available in the forest (duh), and second, this firewood is free, which is just as well because most people around these parts are very poor marginal farmers. I figured that since our stove is efficient, it would make some difference at least, since people are going to keep using firewood in any case.

The group of people I went with are committed wildlife conservationists who have the excellent idea that if marginal farmers in and around core areas of wildlife reserves are provided with a steady source of income, they would welcome the opportunity and would not hesitate to let their land be re-occupied by forest. It's operationally tricky - their plan is not to buy the land or acquire it or anything, just have a gentleman's agreement with the farmer to have him stop farming and take a steady income stream in lieu of it. They plan to do this for five years initially. If the farmer is not happy, he can go back to tilling the land and give up the income stream - and as might have occurred to you, it depends entirely on whether the farmers actually treat the gentleman's agreement in a gentlemanly way, but my hosts, who have been working in this area for several decades now, believe that it will. Raising a toast to that, because if the experiment succeeds, it will increase the area of the wildlife reserve, improve the lot of the marginal farmers in the area and generally be good news for the animals living in the forest.

After I got back, we had a series of dinners at home. And being the princely host, I can't not have a drink or two with my guests. So much to the missus' chagrin - the missus is of the school of thought that I should go around with *shudder* a glass of coke in my hand and pretend that there is rum in it - I have been drinking like a fish. It has begun to show around the mezzanine floor and the formerly  (circa 1985) washboard abs have begun to resemble an experimental geodesic structure. Friends have begun to make tactless observations. One went so far as to crack an allegedly humorous joke which I'm giving below, just to let you know how unkind the world is.

The joke: Moe and Joe are sitting in a sauna
Joe:  Moe, you've really grown fat
Moe: I know. Need to do something about it. Why, I haven't seen my willy for years
Joe: Why don't you diet?
Moe: Why, what color is it now?
Public: HAHAHAHA!
Me: *glum silence*

Well, that's mostly all for now. I wanted to write more about the Tadoba forest but the missus is yelling for me to have dinner - bean sprouts salad and barley and broccoli soup, if you must know, accompanied by a glass of unsalted buttermilk that has neither butter nor milk, just a sort of watery white liquid - and I had better attend to that instanter.

Ciao and have a good weekend.

General rant on the phenomenon of Government giving itself arbitrary powers

I'm not much of a lad for political statement. I usually shuffle on to the next TV channel when I see someone hyperventilating about someone else having embezzled gazillions and what's worse, not having passed on any of the gazillions embezzled to the chap hyperventilating. As people have started observing, this is mostly trial by media, much in the nature of the lynch mobs in western novels, or witch hunts and as such, completely unfair and undesirable. It has to stop. But, as others have pointed out, it won't stop till there is a marked decline in corruption and abuse of power. And so it goes on.

"Why, then", you ask, shrewdly, in my opinion, "are you writing about it?"

Well, I have a pet theory of corruption, which I wanted to sound you out on, which goes "Remove the powers of your government to regulate things that do not concern it and most corruption will simply vanish"

"Very nice, of course, Naren" you will say, just to humor me, "but how is government to govern if it does not have any powers? Tell me that. Or perhaps it might have escaped your attention. It's a state of existence called anarchy"

Perhaps you are right. We can't just yank out all the government's powers just like that. We need law and order. We need justice. And the defense of the realm can't be left to the goodnaturedness of the folk living in the border areas

But the police deciding what time night clubs should go on till?

"We have decided" the police chief will say in a pompous voice "that anyone who revels until 59 seconds past twenty nine minutes after one a.m. is a law abiding citizen but only until then. After that moment, he is civilizations worst offender, as far as we are concerned, and fit to be thrown in with others in for minor misdemeanors such as rape and murder"

WE gave the police that power. Why, I can't imagine, but we DID. And unless we take it away, they're going to keep abusing it. What's in it for them? Some good, clean, wholesome fun and of course, the possibility that the night club owners will get together and slip them a little something every once in a while to look the other way because it hurts their business and customers, being what they are, don't always like to end their revelry at legally specified moments.

I propose that we take away this little item from under the jurisdiction of the police.

"But..but..", you sputter indignantly " what about law and order? What about rapes and murders being committed by those partying in these dens of vice after 1:29:59?"

Well, that is still against the law and the police still have the right to haul the chap doing so under diverse provisions of the penal code. All I'm asking for is to completely remove this little power, the power of arbitrarily deciding till what time revelers can revel, from the police. You will find a lot of nightclubs springing up, revelers reveling, and money generally moving with increasing velocity in the economy, which surely must be good. Worth a try anyway, what do you think?

Because, even if it doesn't, it will at least remove ONE source of corruption

I can think of dozens of such powers. The Sub Registrar of Assurances, for instance. This practitioner of what is evidently a dark art, judging from the number of touts and go-betweens that infest his offices, registers your legal document. That is all. Just jots it down in a little diary (I would imagine), takes your photograph, and stores a copy in his archives so that it remains safe from fires and tempests.

What powers this gentleman has that permit him to demand usurious bribes I have no clue but he does. A simple, specific power of attorney from my father to me to enable me to sign some shares related papers because he was unwell cost me Rs. 5000/- in bribes. The chap didn't even read it, as far as I could tell. Just pocketed the money, scowled at me for staring at him, and soundlessly motioned at me to get moving. I paid because, well, if I hadn't, my father who was quite unwell at the time, would have had to come again to that office, which might or might not have been possible.

I propose we take away this guy's power. I'm betting we will not be risking social revolt or popular uprising by revoking this dude's powers. Just make him the official little-diary-keeper without the option of saying no-I-will-not-write-your-name-down-because-I'm-not-in-the-mood.

Other suggestions:

Removal of police and indeed all government jurisdiction over gambling. These people are wagering their own money, what goes of whose father's if they lose it and come to destitution?

Removal of prohibition, at least in the state of Maharashtra. Any one who is not completely blind can verify, with a cursory tour of his neighbourhood, how ridiculously easy it is to obtain alcohol. Why, then, should random government johnnies have the power to decide whatever it is that they decide? (I confess I don't have a clue. And neither, as far as I could tell, did anyone else I happened to ask. But the department of prohibition exists in all glory and harvests large amounts of cash from the wines and spirits trade at regular interval, if sources are to be believed)

Ah well, such is life. People going on and on about how Nitin Gadkari stashed away crores and how Ajit Pawar squirreled away billions. They did it because WE gave them the power. Not them, specifically of course, we gave powers to that office.

And it is time we took them away. Or at least started demanding at least SOME of those powers be taken away.

What do you think?

The Dharwad Pedas. (Jobless post)

It started with the Dharwad Pedas.

"Naren, do you want to die?"

"?"

"You have diabetes in your family. You have high triglyceride counts. Your HDL is low. What do you say to that?"

"Life?"

"Don't play dumb with me. What happened to the pedas?"

"What pedas?"

"The Dharwad pedas"

"Oh. I ate one after dinner"

"There were eight in the box this morning. There are only four now"

"Gautham must have eaten them. He's a growing lad. And he's very good at football. Did you see him playing football this Saturday?"

"Gautham has  been out all day"

"Oh, yes. NOW I remember.  I told the maid to have them"

"Yes?"

"They were going to go bad. It's a milk product. Not good to let it go bad. Turns into pois.."

"You ate four pedas. FOUR!"

"Sorry"

"What else?"

"What?"

"What do you say after 'Sorry'?"

"I'll never eat those pedas again"

"Good"

"But they're going to spoil!"

"Tough luck"

"Ok, I'll join gym"

"Attaboy. But you have to promise me, no more than ONE peda a day"

"Two? They're very small"

"Ok, but no more than two under ANY circumstances. Place your hand on my head and promise. If you break your promise, remember I will die. AND. No pedas at ALL on the day you miss gym"

I love her.

Singapore Chronicles - We hit Orchard Road

I'm assuming you've read the last two posts on our singapore trip. Actually, probably not. The reasoning being that if you had, you wouldn't have come back. So here's a little recap.
1. We decide to go to Singapore.
2. Visa procedure easy.
3. N Shenoy and family make it past Singapore immigration despite the head of the family looking like a member of the Chicago underworld on his passport.
4. Some random theology.

When I finally rounded up the second post, which you wisely avoided reading,  we were at Changi, local sim cards in hand, looking to head  into the evil city. Though missus tells me calling Singapore an evil city is not unlike referring to Ms. H. R. Clinton as a dusky seductress.

"Is there a pre-paid taxi counter anywhere around?" I asked the lads

"No, sweet" the missus piped "I told you a dozen times on the flight we're taking a train"

And indeed we were. The missus, who has serious extra-sensory powers, led us to a railway station somewhere in the interiors of the airport and shooed us into a jolly decent little train. It soon filled up with people but there was virtually no pushing and shoving, which felt a little weird, like I was in the middle of a lot of holographic images of humanoid creatures. I nostalgically reminisced about our locals, where you could rely on a chap to dig his elbow into your sternum as he scratched himself, burp into your airspace just as you're inhaling, or atleast step on your feet. Here were about a hundred people standing virtually still and unconnected to each other despite being really close. A bit like those discrete intervals our statistics lecturer used to ramble on about.

Rambling, rambling. Get a move on, Naren. Right.

"Get off, get off!" I woke up to some deft prodding in the anterior ribs. I stumbled out with the bag in my charge. "Sleepy head! Why didn't you sleep on the flight? And where did you learn to sleep standing in that disconcertingly equine way?"

'Annie once taught us how to sleep on the front bench in school without being caught. You put your elbows on the table like this and hold your head in your hands, like you're in deep thought, and then..."

"Isn't this place remarkable? Wow! Look! Ferrari car outside!" hoping for brief respite while the lads ran towards the exit.

I got a glare from the missus and a disappointed whine from the lads who found no car remotely resembling a Ferrari

"Annie wouldn't know a Ferrari from a camel's rump" said the missus, by way of mollification.

"Annie, Annie, do you know the difference between a camel's rump and an ATM machine?"

"Er, no.."

"Oh, then you'd have to be really careful drawing cash in Rajasthan"

"hahaha" went a little chorus

I sighed and decided to concede the point. Presently we reached our hotel, which turned out to be bang above the railway station. I performed my designated task of shuffling up to the chaps behind the desk, concluded the form filling and card swiping ritual......

And landed up on Orchard Road.

General rambling, but read on, includes theological gems-Part II

Let me first apologize for misleading you  in the earlier post (assuming you've read it. You haven't, you say? Sound chap! Well here's a summary. I called it "General rambling, but read on, includes theological gems", in which I recounted how we went off on a fairly impromptu vacation to Singapore. I had intended to add one bit of theological reasoning that I was the recipient off but didn't because I sort of fell asleep while writing. I intend to remedy that today...)

To continue the tale, we cleared Singapore immigration in record time. This must be the world's friendliest passport control.

In India, whenever we leave or enter, the chap across the immigration desk looks askance. Questions are asked in the most incredulous way possible ("You want to WHAT?!" "Go  WHERE?!" "Coming back WHEN?!"), and the chap, who is evidently trained in this, rolls his eyes in a disbelieving fashion and lets you pass only after summoning all the goodness inside him. None but the brave emerge without their inner garments soaked in cold sweat.

The lady at the counter in CHangi didn't ask any of us a word. Not even me, and my passport clearly carries a photo of me looking like an international criminal.

"Go and find out where we can get a local sim card", commanded the missus, who had now taken over  complete command and awarded herself emergency powers, "while I freshen up".

The boys and I scooted off in three separate directions. Changi airport was looking like the convocation center for Indian Parliamentarians Who Have Passed the Decent Behaviour Test, that is to say, completely empty. Which was unsurprising because it was 6 am Singapore time.

The missus returned all freshened up and found the three of us running around the airport like headless chickens.

"Silly boys!. Can't you see that sign there?" and pointed us to a large kiosk bearing all the telltale marks of sim card salesmanship. You know, smiling people, images of phones and joyous revelations of the enormous sums of money to be saved. We sheepishly went thither and purchased our phone cards.

And here, before I forget, is one of the theological gems gleaned. I was having a conversation with the older son who, having gone through a long season of exams and entrance tests, is a strong believer while I'm a bit of an atheist.

"God does not exist" I told him confidently, after a longish discussion on what god would do to people who eat non-veg on tuesdays. We were both agreed on the fact that god would do nothing, he because he believed god was a cool dude who would surely see how uncool it was to have no nonveg days in the week while I held the view because I was convinced he didn't exist

"How can you be sure?"

"Where is the evidence? We only have hearsay, right? Chaps who have seen or spoken to god and then told the rest of us about it. No hard evidence, no?"

"Yes Annie, but what if suddenly god were to emerge tomorrow and show himself, what happens to your theory?"

"He wont. He can't"

"Why not?"

And the chap was right. How did I know he didn't exist? All I knew was he probably didn't. I couldn't be sure.

And, as is customary when working out involved threads of thought like the aforementioned, the old bean began to throb.

"And even if God doesn't exist, he can get things done" said the lad.

"Eh?"

"You know what 'i' is, no?"

"The ego? The self?"

"No Annie. 'i'. The square root of minus one"

"Oh THAT i. What about it?"

"You know why it is called an imaginary number?"

"Yes, because there is no number which can be squared to give a negative number. So?"

"And yet we use it to solve all kinds of mathematical problems, do we not?"

"Er.. yes...."

"So what difference does it make whether god exists or not if he can solve problems?"

I'm still looking for a suitable response to this one.

General rambling, but read on, includes theological gems

It is well known in elite circles that Shenoy N has lost it. Not that he was the brightest of lamps in the incandescent bulb showroom but still. To make matters worse, I've also lost whatever little ability I had to write coherent posts. But then I thought to myself, why should that stop me? Rhetorical question, in case you didn't get it, the correct answer being "it shouldn't"

Right.

We went to Singapore, the brood and I, this being a long overdue vacation. The missus was showing subtle signs of nervous breakdown. She would laugh and cry simultaneously, for instance, and at least on two occasions, passed by handbag shops without going in. This was turning out to be serious.

To make matters worse, the government of India, bless its little heart, was going out of its way to triple check and verify our passports which we had sent for renewal. "Check it thoroughly, boys, this is important!' went the cry around the passport office. The result was that we got them nearly a month and a half late, putting us out of contention for vacations to the more discerning and narrow minded countries which insist on long incubation periods for visa applications.

"Singapore!" suggested a friend. "It's the friendliest place in the world. Just fill out your visa application form , seal it with a kiss and two working nights later, bingo!"

And indeed, it did bingo. They didn't actually send a bottle of champagne and a bouquet but the delight in the Singaporean High Commission was unmistakable. "Come at once, love and xxx" said the visa letter, "and come as often as you like till  May 23rd, 2014, for visits not exceeding thirty days at a time. You won't spoil it by working, we hope? No, you won't! We knew. Well, hop on to that flight and come on over, the party is just starting". The Tamil representative in their office added a comforting "ComeOffRa".

The missus, in the meanwhile, had decamped to Mysore with the boys, leaving me alone and lonesome in this heartless city. I told her so.

"Nonsense. You will be partying the moment I've left"

"You always judge me harshly"

"Yeah? And what is this I hear about a tweet up happening Saturday evening?"

"Er, nothing is confirmed. Just a couple of guys..."

"Oh have fun dear. Just pulling your leg" and with that she pinched my cheeks, cheerily told me not to drink too much ("You blather in the most embarrassing way when you do") and disappeared into the terminal.

It was left to me to do all the remaining paperwork. Book hotel, buy tickets, things like that. I managed to mess it up of course, by completely forgetting to do it, but resourceful missus was resourceful. She tied up the thing through a jolly efficient travel agent and the papers, taking a leaf out of Mohammed's mountain policy,  more or less came to me.

We had a weirdly timed flight, resulting in us reaching Singapore on a bright Monday morning when our bodies were telling us it was Sunday night. None of us had slept on the flight, of course. The boys because the flight had Super Mario as the inflight entertainment. I because the flight attendant looked like she'd take it personal if I said 'no' to her offer of alcoholic beverages, and the missus who had latched on to some kind of bollywood tearjerker.

We staggerered out - I should say I staggered out. The others walked in straight lines - into the immigration and sailed through it in an impressive two minutes........ (to be continued)

Another day in the life of Narendra Shenoy

When a writer, even one who claims to be writing his autobiography, starts getting autobiographical, the wise person knows that he, the writer, is scraping the bottom of the idea barrel. And I, dear reader, am going to be doing that. Getting autobiographical, I mean. Narrating incidents from my personal life.

If you choose, shrewdly in my opinion, to light out of here to some more intelligent page (Shahid Kapoor's twitter feed, for instance), I will shed a tear but acknowledge that you have excellent choice. I am honest like that.

But if you, dear reader, displaying the spirit of recklessness and adventure that people who explore the Amazon basin, or watch episodes of Big Boss, showcase in large quantities, decide to stay on, there will be none more delighted than me.

Yes, you guessed right, if you guessed from the previous sentence, that I have been having a couple. It is a beautiful night. The moon is out. The silence is ethereal. The household has gone to sleep. And I have been through a harrowing evening out in Mumbai traffic.

We had gone to a random uncle's house. I have non-random uncles too, like everyone else, but to these non-random (or ordered, if you are into math) uncles, one does not go unless there is a specific reason such as a birth, marriage, illness, dinner invitation or something. Random uncles are uncles to whose houses one goes because one has not gone there for a long time.

The missus and the brats had gone there earlier in the evening. I landed up directly from work, using public transport. Some cud was chewed, banter exchanged, the telling of jokes stayed by the intermittent basilisk stare of the missus and the evening went well, even by the missus' exacting standards.

On the way back, I drove. And we got the full force of Bombay traffic. I'm not usually troubled by this. When I'm driving in Bombay, I just switch off my mind, as I would in, say, a lecture on management strategy or a movie starring Akshay Kumar and enjoy the mindlessness on view. But today it was extraordinarily bad.

I don't know if you've felt this way yourself, but sometimes I feel, when wending my way through the traffic, like a foetus emerging from a womb, with labor contractions pushing me in directions not chosen by me.

I expressed this thought.

"I've never heard anything so ridiculous, Naren! Foetus emerging from a womb, it seems!" said the missus "Keep the left lane. Watch out for the truck!"

"Annie," piped up elder son, "Gau says Sanjay Dutt's mother was an actress named Madhubala. Was she?"

"Yes, yes" I said absently while trying not to be the cause of a motorcyclist's death

"No, silly" said the missus "it was Nargis. Surely even YOU have seen Nargis' movies"

"Nargis?" Younger son was sceptical. "Are you sure, Amma?"

"Annie, quick riddle" said elder son "What's the singular of Madhubala?"

I did not answer, preoccupied as I was with avoiding an autorickshaw who, for reasons not clearly discernible, had decided to go in a vectorially perpendicular direction to the flow of the traffic

"Plural of Madhubala? Madhubalas?"

"No, no, singular of Madhubala. Ok, I'll tell you the answer. Madhubalum"

I wished I were an octopus. I could have continued driving and still clouted him one on the side of the head.

"Haha" said younger son, obviously seeing humour in that alleged joke "And you know what the singular of Nargis is?"

"Hahaha!" elder son seemed to know the answer. "Nargoose".

"Boys, " I spoke sharply "if you don't keep quiet, you will witness the spectacle of your dear father having a nervous breakdown. Please"

"Just joking, Annie!"

"Yes", added the missus, "you have just lost your sense of humor these days"

I would have responded with something suitably acerbic but right then an autorickshaw decided to slam his brakes for a passenger and I bumped into him.

He emerged from the auto in anger.

"Can't see or what? Eyes or potatoes?"

I was irritated. "You braked, you capital of England without the preposition"

"You should have seen, you inclined channel for conveying grain, water or coal to a lower level" said the auto driver

"Iconic clock tower of England plus the French word for warm, hot!" I exclaimed, unable to keep cool

"Let it go, let it go" advised other drivers. "Not much damage, no?"

Not much damage indeed! What about my self esteem!

But by then the traffic had started moving  and the auto guy disappeared.

"You are so careless, Naren! You never pay attention to the traffic" the missus rubbed salt into the wounds.

But it is all back to normal. I'm in my lair, with a decent whiskey. The other characters in this drama are snoring peacefully.

Though I'm feeling just a little bad about missing the opportunity of telling the auto guy the website address of Bose, Denmark.

Twitterendra

Ah! Dug this out from the "Drafts" folder. I've been struggling to find something to write about and this darned writer's block has been, like a good CPI-M high command, obstructing all attempts to achieve results.

This @daddysan writes so beautifully! Simple words but deep thought. This excellent post he wrote today about Twitter, how it has woven its threads into his life and how it has given him those moments where he just sort of sits back, sighs gently and feels Buddha-like happiness, got me thinking.




I'm not much of a thinker in the sense of coming up with radically original thought, but give me someone else's original thought and I can stretch, mangle, verbify and otherwise extend it as well as anyone else. The missus has often remarked to me that she has never met anyone who can use so many words to say so little, which I think is a compliment.  And Daddysan has invited me, indeed, practically begged me (I assume it must be me, though Daddysan has tactfully refrained from naming anyone) to share "What are your Twitter stories? How has Twitter added to your life?"




 Twitter and I go back a long way. Three or four years now and I've primarily used Twitter as a place to read good stuff . The occasional witticisms of course, but mostly the links to interesting articles and points of view that some people consistently manage to put out. Every once in a while there is an interesting discussion on things I'd start off knowing only tangentially about and end up knowing enough to call myself "well informed".


The one thing about Twitter that fascinates me is the number of truly brilliant people out there. I interact with a small subset of them but I know there are many more. Some are wordplay geniuses. Others are superbly balanced analysts of any issue floating around. There are tech wizards, subtle litterateurs, gifted chefs, and some just good fellas.


The missus doesn't like me spending much time on twitter. We have the occassional war of words when I miss what she has been saying, on account of giggling away at something @rameshsrivats has said, but for the most part she just says it louder and oftener, till I get it.

"That's it?" you must be saying to yourself "THAT is your twitter story?"

Myanmar news

A new kind of virus seems to have hit the Irrawaddy delta. Known as the Myanmar Fit, the viral infection exhibits virtually no symptoms of illness other than causing severe aggressiveness and rebelliousness among some individuals. The delta has a reasonably peaceful population of Mons and Bamars and the virus has not caused endemic unrest as earlier feared.

The Military Junta however is watching the situation carefully, and hoping it doesn't reach the interiors where the Shan tribe has a significant presence. Already facing rebellion, the military fears that the situation would spiral out of hand should the virus proliferate. As the spokesperson for the Junta said, the government hopes that the Fit doesn't hit the Shan

My views on the Lokpal bill and the UID project

Something tells me I really shouldn't be writing posts like this one - what is about to follow is my 'critique' of the Lokpal movement - because I am a moron, untutored in the niceties of governance and administration, but I'm quite jobless at the moment and it's either write this post or die of boredom. Plus, rightly or wrongly, I feel strongly about this.

I'll make my point in a slightly roundabout way, with an anecdote.

Many years ago, I had a customer, for whom I made press tools, who was a supplier of sheet metal components to an appliances manufacturer.

This manufacturer had product lines which included televisions, refrigerators, washing machines and air-conditioners.

My customer, a small one-man-show, used to supply components to both the washing machine plant and the air conditioner plant.

One day, he was raided by the Preventive Department of the  Central Excise Collectorate who accused him of mis-labeling air-conditioner parts as washing-machine parts.

He protested. He showed them purchase orders from the customer, showing part numbers, produced drawings corresponding to those part numbers which clearly mentioned the model of the washing machine the parts were going into, and even correspondence about them.

The Preventive Department - scary looking gents they were - menacingly told him to save his breath.

"This does not mean anything, these drawings and purchase orders" their superintendent told him. "It's probably fabricated in order to evade duty"

After an hour or two - I was there, for moral support - the officials, who were sitting at my customer's table while all of us were standing around, terrified, summoned him into the cabin.

I went along, because this chap was white as a sheet and I was worried he might collapse.

The superintendent grimly told us that the duty rate differential was 70 percent and going by the production figures, and assuming this had been going on since the factory started, he would raise a duty demand of ten lakh rupees, with a like amount as penalty, and interest thereon.

"Thirty, thirty five lakhs it could be. You'll have to pay half the demand and then fight the case" he said.

My customer went limp and even more white. I propped him up, wondering whether to ask the chaps for a seat. They showed no inclination.

Then the inspector, the superintendent's subordinate, put a friendly arm around my customer and took us both outside the room.

"Look, the sahib is not a bad person. I'll talk to him. We'll discuss and come to a reasonable understanding"

The cookie crumbled, for me at least, though my customer still looked like a dying duck.

We finally settled at a very reasonable payment of one lakh rupees, with a monthly honorarium of five thousand rupees, to prevent the preventive department from replaying this scene.

I remember my customer weeping bitterly after this episode. Huge racking sobs. "What wrong have I done?" and "Why me?" were the major themes of his anguish.

And the very next year, a chap named Manmohan Singh - I think it's the same guy who's PM now, though I wouldn't swear on it - as finance minister, rationalized duty rates for excise. Many things, including washing machine parts and airconditioner parts, ended up having same or nearly the same rates of duty.

He also made rules preventing random raids by preventive departments unless there was probable cause, backed up by some preliminary investigation and a sanction from a senior officer.

And my customer stopped paying his honorarium to the excise department.

This, in my humble opinion, is what needs to be done to curb corruption. Simplification of administrative procedure, transparency and accountability. The Lokpal bill is just going to put another layer of vultures on top of the existing ones. The existing ones feed on the corpse of the nation. The Lokpal will feed on what it can snatch from the existing vultures.

One of the things that could possibly have gone a long way towards curbing corruption, the UID Bill, has been quietly killed, unnoticed by the fierce watchdog  that is Team Anna.

The UID bill was clever. It merely sought to record biometric data of individuals. That was it. Just record the biometric data, tag the individual, and make the data available nationwide.

The great P Chidambaram, among others, realized that this data could someday attach itself to bank accounts, propery records, financial transactions and overseas travel.

Suddenly, there would be no place to hide when an investigation happened. At the press of a key, everything would come gushing out. Your accounts, your lockers, your lands, your flats, your shareholdings in companies, everything.

They were horrified. And they dug out a whole bunch of very technical reasons why the project had to be abandoned. (here's an article about those reasons http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-12-16/news/30525319_1_aadhaar-uid-scheme-data-protection )

The arguments are essentially that UID will violate privacy, that the project is not technically feasible, that it is not financially feasible and that it wasn't approved by the Parliament.

Violate privacy? Well, all they've recorded is my name and address along with my photograph, fingerprint and retina scan.

Technically unfeasible? It seems that in a large population like ours, there are likely to be people who have the same biometrics. Pshaw!

Financially unfeasible? Costs some 1500 cr, it seems. Chicken feed compared to the 6,00,000 crores or whatever we're cheerfully planning to  bust up over the food security bill, no? Or the 1,00,000 cr oil deficit.

No, the harder I think about it the more it seems likely that the powers that be have figured out that the UID is going to make their lives tough and have very neatly pushed it out of their way for several years atleast.

My apologies once again for inflicting all this half-baked reasoning on you, especially if you happen to disagree with it. One of those days when I'm feeling very morose.