Soon it will be budgive day And, all that all of us can do is pray - Dear Lord, help us Get through the day. Help us not to boo... Or rue, and feel the blues Of the tax and spend cues Or the Customs of the Excise that leave some renewed.. And most of us to stew. With GST, nothing's free Not anymore, unless You stay grounded At the bottom of the Economic tree... Its low hanging fruit Tastes best And it's free.. But not for you and me! Apparently it's tough When the freebies are endemic And war's the new pandemic And building roads Opens new vistas and stuff... They would be remiss Not to add a Surcharge or Cess It's the same dirty cloth And it will clean up the mess? Thank God The Vat has gone flat Still there is no way out Or is there? Skip the bill.. maybe there's that.. Only a professional like Tom Sawyer With rules of cash in the foyer Can ignore this day and stay In happy mayhem. Else, You can't beat 'em with Paytm.. The salaried are harried Their income Is income before before tax. Like COVID before the vacs. Oh to be in business, Legitimate or illegitimate... where Income Is Income after tax? At the end of the day, Indeed it would be nice If we could eat Our curry and rice At the same price!
Come on guys. Cheer up. Soon it will be bud-get day. They get, you give. Get it? You’ve Gotta give, before (if) you get. It’s built on the popular maxim.. in giving you receive! You are precious in this budget process – all 3 percent of you. It’s all about you. But not so in the election process that’s underway. You could ponder over this dilemma over a Budweiser. And Buddy, hope you will be wiser.
The Budget is always based on history. If something cost Rs 100 last year, this year it will cost Rs. 110. Income, on the other hand, on a revision of history…Rs 100 may become Rs. 90 or 80. Mid year it is revised and it’s called revised estimate. When u revise, it will change. That’s the lesson history teaches us!
Revision of history is not about turning the pages of your textbook for the nth time before a board exam during revision holidays anymore. There are no holidays for revision currently. It’s an Everyday task, so that even if there is an out of syllabus question raised, and there are many, you are covered in glory among your stakeholders…
History has always been the most boring subject in the pantheon of Macaulay’s school curriculum. Because it was always His Story. But now its more interesting because His is whomever you want him to be…. And your imagination can help you in unimaginable ways…to make it interesting and ease your understanding of a complex subject – Would Sachin Tendulkar have had the same success as Sunil Gavaskar if he had played with the same constraints (or lack of them depending on how you view them)in the same era?
Indeed it’s your right to look at your past in new ways and make it your story rather than his story; and it is your duty to reclaim it from those who wrote it with a Parker pen and rewrite it with birch bark or bhurjapatra (Sanskrit) on dried palm leaves.
PM Modi too felt it’s time that we fulfill our duties rather than fight for our rights. For 75 years our focus has been off. we’ve been busy “talking about rights, fighting for rights and wasting time,” he said in a recent speech.
“The talk of rights, to some extent, for some time, may be right in a particular circumstance, but forgetting one’s duties completely has played a huge role in keeping India weak.” Everyone must “walk on the path of duty”, he urged, if we really want to see the country achieve new heights.
In terms of statues? Or statutes? We have the tallest ones, and more to come; now there’s even one that can be seen but not felt, virtually unbreakable, like the man himself, an old style nationalist, in the one for all and all for one tradition, not the one for some or some for one rendition. It weighs less than a kilogram. It’s a hollow gram. Literally. You can’t see thru it, but you can go through it to a rainbow nation like no other. As regards the latter, there are so many and they are so complicated that the legal-bureaucratic as well as the illegal-aristocratic fraternity can enjoy a lifetime of employment, that some think the bud cannot give!
Surely our tallest is right. Asking for rights is to take a left turn. Doing our duty can put us on the right, if not righteous path; we’ve Gotta make our beds in the morning before we ask for a bed sheet; and there lies the conundrum.
One conundrum leads to another. The conundrum of the girl child. Man knows he cannot come into existence with out her, yet he seeks to destroy her. It’s a paradox if there was one. Yesterday’s celebration of the international day of the Girl Child sought to understand and resolve this conundrum through numerous virtual omicronic seminars. At the end of the day we were no closer to a solution or resolution than at the beginning!
The best way to make the boy child to remember and celebrate this day with her is to remind him that without her, he wouldn’t be here. Note the spelling… he, her, here. Remind him with his sonogram. Not a hologram!
Have a good week and remember, in giving you will receive! Hopefully.
Disclaimer
This Article is written in the lighter vein. It hopes to bring a smile to your face, and you must not ascribe motives to its contents. There is no connection to events and characters in real life and if perchance you find a connect with any such real-life event or character, rest assured its purely coincidental.
Images by Gerd Altmann & Ishwar Artist
Brian the Muse! 