Skip to main content

Taxes and positive thinking

The Communist

The Kerala state budget was passed yesterday adding a lot more burden to the people. The prices of most things went up. “Oh my God!” I said reading about the additional cess on petrol. The simple delight of driving will now become dearer. Maggie came rushing hearing my cry of shock.

“What happened? Are you ok?” She thought I had developed a sudden heart problem because my palm was on my chest. She came and rubbed my chest frantically. I loved it. If a budget can bring so much love, let there be more budgets even if it means paying what I cannot really afford, I thought as I reclined on my sofa to enjoy Maggie’s caressing palm on my chest.

Maggie is no fool, however. “You’re faking it?” She asked.

“No, darling,” I said earnestly. “Look at this.” I showed her the newspaper.

“So what?” She asked after absorbing the price rises. She has mastered the art of absorbing anything having lived with me for more than quarter of a century.

“Even our simple drives will become beyond our budget,” I pointed out.

“But it’s for the country and the state,” she explained. “As good citizens, it is our duty to make sure that our rulers live in good condition.”

That’s true, I thought. Our Prime Minister rides in a car that cost Rs 12.5 crore. He doesn’t have to pay anything for its fuel or insurance or driver or anything. Maggie and I use the cheapest car available in the country: Maruti Alto. We save fuel and thus save the environment. We are good citizens so that our King can ride in a Mercedes Maybach S650.

“Why do you pick on Modi all the time?” Maggie fulminated. She is a Modi bhakt. She thinks nobody can bring development to India as Modi does. “This is the state budget.” She points at the newspaper. “Your favourite left government of Pinarayi Vijayan has brought out this budget.”

That’s true. It is then I became enlightened. The Buddha was wrong to leave his wife for seeking enlightenment. Without Maggie, I would have been a mere Sancho Panza bringing only comic relief  to my acquaintances, and especially our relatives.   

My beloved Chief Minister, who imposed this new cess on my simplest delight of driving, uses a Carnival Limousine. He goes abroad for medical treatments. He tells the media, let alone the common people, to “get out” when they go to interview him. And we pay for all that.

It’s a nice system, I say to myself. I don’t say it loud because Maggie will start enlightening me on why it is really a nice system. She calls it positive thinking. 

The Ascetic


Comments

  1. Hari Om
    Difficult, having opposing views in the household... or family. In ours, we have one who won't hear a bad word about Boris Johnson. I have nothing good to say... about him, or about our current state of politics. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Our PM is the most popular leader now in the world, according to a new report. I will have to learn to admire him now.

      Delete
  2. Lovely read Tom. I didn't know your wife was a Modi Bhakt. My mother and father are Modi Bhakts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Maggie isn't a bhakt really. She wants me to be safe, that's all. 😊

      Delete
  3. A hilarious account of a grim reality!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Come 2024, we have a few things in our hand

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...

The Ramayana Chronicles: 26 Stories, Endless Wisdom

I’m participating in the A2Z challenge of Blogchatter this year too. I have been regular with this every April for the last few years. It’s been sheer fun for me as well as a tremendous learning experience. I wrote mostly on books and literature in the past. This year, I wish to dwell on India’s great epic Ramayana for various reasons the prominent of which is the new palatial residence in Ayodhya that our Prime Minister has benignly constructed for a supposedly homeless god. “Our Ram Lalla will no longer reside in a tent,” intoned Modi with his characteristic histrionics. This new residence for Lord Rama has become the largest pilgrimage centre in India, drawing about 100,000 devotees every day. Not even the Taj Mahal, a world wonder, gets so many footfalls. Ayodhya is not what it ever was. Earlier it was a humble temple town that belonged to all. Several temples belonging to different castes made all devotees feel at home. There was a sense of belonging, and a sense of simplici...