Cut Diamond with Diamond

“Cut diamond with diamond”, he used to say often. “If you have a bad cold, eat deep frozen icecreams! If you’ve a nagging back pain, pinch your hand hard until it pains you more than the pain that’s constantly nagging you. Don’t you know how they treat snake-bite? They inject small doses of the poisonous venom – and soon you’re on your way to recovery! Again, the vaccines – what do you think they contain? A mild form of the same micro-organism, which helps you build its antibodies…” he could go on, my old friend, who later grew up, one learnt, to be a professional in the financial field!

After a couple of stints in reputed finance companies, he took to consultancy. I don’t really remember his name….nor did I ever heed his advice, but I am sure he has prospered and become an advisor to the likes of Ben Bernanke and his counterparts in several European countries. How else could one explain the rising belief in worldly monetary policies, that debilitating debt that threatens to engulf countries all over the world, ought to be treated with ……., you guessed it - more debt?

I am sure, his wisdom, which may have been otherwise lost its significance, if it was continued to be spent on fools like me. One would have partaken of large dollops of icecream, perhaps only to have the common cold transform to pneumonia, while my doctor, jubilantly declare, “Congratulations – you don’t have common cold, which has no known cure yet, but pneumonia, which does!”

Fortunately for the world, such great thinkers usually succeed and their popularity grows exponentially. Financial wizards are made of such stuff and one may not be surprised if they would want us to believe that the only way to remove poverty is to inject more poverty in our masses! Maybe suck out whatever little money that’s been meant to be going to them by way of NREGA or any of those obscure-sounding schemes, that you hear of only on the budget day – that too only if you hear our Hon. FM speak at the annual parliamentary ritual.

So kind-hearted government folks, toiling in our rural areas, ensure that the money doesn’t reach them and continue to enrich those afflicted by money-related diseases, albeit, of the excesses kind. After all, we’ve got to get rid of poverty, don’t we?

So we find everyone out to heal the world – NGOs, GOs (government offices), industrialists, entrepreneurs, politicians, judicial bodies, extra-judicial bodies… all of them! But the method remains the same – the best way to avoid a hangover is to drink all day!

So how do we handle insurgency? Create more insurgency! If Naxals are a problem, let’s create Salwa Judums! Create new small Frankensteins to handle the old BIG Frankensteins, that our previous governments created! Until the small ones grow BIG and join the BIG Frankenstein they were meant to destroy!

The members of the public, of course, should not sympathise with any of them – they’re waging a war against us! So we shall have extra-judicial panchayats to deal with problems that the judicial bodies cant deal with (or have been the cause of having created them in the first place). Call them Khap, Baap or whatever! We need urgent solutions to our ever growing ailments.

And I am sure we will have them as long as my old friend (cant remember his name...) or his types thrive on this eager planet, willing to offer their advice to anyone like me, who is languishing in my miseries and is willing to lend his ear!

As for me, I just thought I must offer readers some anti-dote for my humour! And if this proves to be too strong dose for an anti-dote, you may want to read my article published in “The Indian Weekender”, a weekly newspaper for Indians settled in New Zealand.

Go to page 44 of this link!
To read my article, click on this link