Why one needs awareness of Law?

Guest Post by Dr. Vasundhara Patil, B.Sc.(hons) ,LL.M,CAIIB, Ph.D Law (gold medallist)

Since law is an important part amongst different aspects of society, common people need to know about the laws affecting the common citizens and not just lawyers.
Knowing about the law is important while dealing with people and bodies in different spheres of life.

Knowing about the law, could help you to be careful about not breaking it. It also means that you know which laws cause problems and whether they need to be changed. Law and legal activity is the foundation stone of all social change, this means that your contribution to your nation’s development can be made through a knowing Law. Law is intended for the common man to follow. Generally people accept the Law of the land and also follow the same.

When you fall sick, you don’t immediately rush to the doctor, you try home remedies. If you feel slight feverish, we buy anti-pyretic tablets of your choice. When you have sore throat, you even resort to natural remedies like drinking hot water or drink hot milk with turmeric powder. We don’t go doctor unless we feel that without his medicines, we will not get well.

Similarly we do not consult an advocate, to know if one wants to know how to obtain a driving license or how to transfer the ration card if one relocates. We need not rush to take admission in law college to study law. We ask our friends, relatives who guide us because they have obtained a driving license. This is called becoming aware of the law.

Our Indian Law is based on the maxim”Ignorance of law is no excuse”
It means if one has violated any provisions of law, he cannot take a plea that I am ignorant of the law hence I committed a mistake. I am sorry. He will have to obey the punishment or penalty prescribed under the said law.

That is why we try to become aware of simple provisions of law. We read articles on law, we read simple books, we search websites, and we ask our friends, co-workers, relatives and enhance our awareness of law.

Common Man is surrounded by law from life to death. With a child’s birth, one has to immediately register the event and obtain his birth certificate. Leaving school, obtain school leaving certificate, take up an employment, sign the employment contract, got married, get a marriage certificate. One may want to write a will and when one dies, it’s the responsibility of the legal heirs to obtain death certificate.

If the set procedures /rules are not followed right from the beginning Common Man starts facing difficulties. No birth certificate, no admission in school. If you stay in a rented house and have agreed to pay monthly rent. But after a few months you have some difficulty and you don’t pay rent, what will happen? Unless you are aware of the consequences that you are likely to face, you will be caught unawares.

Suppose you purchase a house property, but you don’t stay there, you don’t even visit the premises for a long time. Later you get to know that the notice for property tax was not paid within the stipulated time and hence along with the penalty, the dues have become very high. Now you will have to pay twice or thrice the amount due. Because you were not aware that once you purchase a house, you immediately become responsible for payment of property tax.

You are walking on the road, some one snatches your bag containing important document or may be your wallet. What are you supposed to do.? Do you have any rights? If you drive a vehicle, you don’t know what documents are required to show that you are the owner of the vehicle you are driving. You don’t have license. Or if you are over speeding, police is following you. What is going to happen to you if police catches you? Endless questions!!!

For all our questions we try to take help of family members first. Then we check up with friends, or try to read some newspaper/magazine, book, or browse the internet for websites which could provide the answers to every why and how affecting our lives lie in different laws.

In case of serious problems, which require special knowledge of law we approach the lawyers. He is last source because we have to pay fees for his consultation. Awareness of law also gives one the benefits attached to the rules/law. Being aware one can avoid pitfalls but also take the benefits of following the laws.

Just as common man has to follow laws, there are some rights which he gets if others don’t follow law. Public servants are responsible for serving the citizens of the country. They are accountable to the common man. They should discharge their duties fearlessly and without bias.

If the public servants harass the common man then he has rights given to him under some law. Remember Shri Anna Hazare’s campaign for drafting of Anti corruption Bill? He went on fast till his demands were met .The common man came on streets to join his campaign because such bill if passed by parliament and is enacted into law will benefit the common man.

A common man is surrounded by Laws, Rules, Regulations, which are to be followed by him, some which are to be followed by others for him. Being aware of the laws makes the common man to avoid the consequences, for not following laws, and helps him to take benefits of his rights, which will make the journey of his life comfortable.

Bloggers’ Post-Script: With the above needs of the common man in mind, Dr. Vasundhara Patil, has been posting basic information about laws and regulations concerning common citizen on her website here.

Some interesting posts on her website:

How to write a will

Format for a General Power of Attorney

Dr. Vasundhara Patil, B.Sc.(hons) ,LL.M,CAIIB, Ph.D Law (gold medallist) is a qualified legal expert and also writes some short stories which have been featured on her website here evergreen.law4all.co.in , which also features some of her recipes. If you have any blogpost on the subject of law, Dr. Vasundhara Patil would love to put up your piece as a guest post on her website.

If you wish to be featured in The ArTicKles Blog, please send your guest-post to my email address g_mavinkurve@hotmail.com .

A flawed concept - MLMs

It has been over a decade now that what is known as MLMs – Multi level Marketing – appeared on the Indian shores. I had been invited through known circles to a presentation by a person who had migrated to the US and had reverse-migrated back to bring this innovative concept to us Indians who had not learnt how to dream! He began his presentation with how the new marketing method differs from the old traditional way of selling consumer products –"There will be no distributors, wholesalers and retailers – they add no value but only act as “middlemen” in the supply chain!”, he proclaimed. “The product will also not be advertised - advertising costs also constitute a large part of the price of the product in the market”, he continued. So one would now get products closer to its true cost price and not at ridiculously inflated prices – all due to the middlemen who were just lousy parasites in the conventional marketplaces. It sounded great – our prayers have been heard!

The presenter then went on to ask us what our dreams were. Would we not want to go on some Foreign trips? Live in palatial houses? Get rich? Retire early? Of course, we did – just tell us how! We could now to it, we learnt from the sorcerer of the marketplace – all we had to do was to enroll as a member and get more members to join in!

Wouldn’t we have to work for the money? Of course, initially we would have to get in as many friends and relative to get onto the bandwagon and then they will be the ones working for you! You enjoy the riches – play golf, go on the vacations you’ve been dreaming of, buy your luxury sedan and live the high life! Sounded just great! Here was I slogging 10-12 hours for a pittance – what a fool I had been, I told myself - when the world had moved on, learnt how to make money and enjoy the good life. I remembered how I had always wanted to be rich – nay “stinking rich” – but all that I had managed to become was “stinking” – the "rich" part was yet to come! So here it was, I told myself, brought to me by the good Samaritan marketing genius of the 21st Century. I must be lucky – really lucky to have been selected for this presentation!

To get such a great opportunity to make the high riches would be a huge investment, no? I had a nagging doubt if the presenter would then drop the bomb and tell us we need to shell out a fortune to be part of this elite money-making club. “Just about Rs. 5000 for the membership”, he said to my great relief – oh that’s ok, not much – I felt greatly relieved! So my future was made – all for a paltry sum, I was elated. Even if i were to lose it, it was not much, was it?!

“But what are you giving in exchange for the membership?” my wife, who had been quietly sitting alongside me, all this while, piped in. “You will get a product hamper – the entire range of our wonderful consumer products, which are not available anywhere – available exclusively for our members!”, the super-salesman – nay super marketing innovator replied.

On our way back, we got talking – while I was gung-ho about the new concept, my wife had only doubts cropping up in her mind – “Why did they not show the products? Why did they not give a sample sachet? How do we know whether the products are good? How do we know if they are worth the money we pay for?” Although I don’t really like the skeptics who give us the peptics, these questions were indeed worth giving a thought! In fact, she had a point – and it set me thinking too: How was it that the products were not the subject of the presentation, when they should have been the main focus of the discussion? How would I convince my friends and relatives if the products itself are not worth the money? Will they really bless me for having shared with them an offer which benefitted them or not? Or will they curse me for selling products not worth the price they have paid for?

Soon enough, we learnt from a common friend that they had already become members of the MLM and had the hamper of products for their exclusive use. And hold your breath – they felt the products, although good, were not worth the money that was paid for it – in fact very expensive – if they had found the products on the shelf of a consumer store, they would never have bought them! So had they begun enrolling members as explained – how long would it be before they booked their first luxury sedan? “We are not going to do that – because we value our relationship with our friends and relatives” was the prompt reply!

So if we assume our friends and relative – all of about 50 members (hopefully), do join in, we would be collectively paying Rs. 2.5 Lakhs! And all these people would again bring more money to the scheme! Collectively, it is not a small amount of money really - if friends and relatives really mattered!

OK. More questions came to my mind:
“How did a concept that had done away with distributors, wholesalers, retailers, advertisements be costlier than similar products available in the market?”
“Have all the members of the MLM who have already joined them replaced these distributors and retailers and become the parasites and middlemen in the new and innovative marketing chain?”
“Isn’t the entire structure of the MLM more beneficial to the old members who had joined early and bears heavy on the later entrants?”
“What will happen when the chain stops growing like my friend who values relationships more than undue profits?”
More importantly: “Are we being lured into the scheme by the promise of an easy money without much hard work?” “Have we been sold a dream instead of a product?” and “If it is too good to be true, perhaps it is?!”

Needless to say, we decided to give the opportunity a miss!

Many people lost money to vanishing MLMs – many early entrants (read: promoters) made money and then vanished without a trace. The Ponzi schemes, which pay money based on the new money coming in and not from profits earned, lasts only until new folks bite the bait! And when they dry up, they leave a vast trail of people who have lost money rather than have gained from them. Today MLMs have found it difficult to enter the market as MLMs they masquerade as ‘genuine online surveys’, ‘content providers’ ‘work from home schemes’ etc. If they are genuine, why do they want enrollment fee for services to be provided by us? Why do they focus on expansion by bringing members, when the focus should be on how to provide the service for the customers who use the output?

More importantly:
How come MLMs which are basically Ponzi scheme are not illegal?
How come they are not heavily regulated by RBI or SEBI?
How come the promoters are never known to the public?
Could it be that these schemes have the blessing of politicians and perhaps we are opening another can of worms here for yet another scam of humongous proportions?
How come the RBI or SEBI has never come forward to explain this to the lay public inspite of several blogs, columns, issues raised in magazines and periodicals?
Many questions – few answers! It is wise to refrain from joining any scheme which is too good to be true - because that is what they are:

Too Good to be True!

Blogger's Post-script: "I always wanted to be stinking rich - 50% target achieved - i am already stinking - i have yet to become rich!"

What's your "Thinking Language"?

For more fun posts on a daily basis, do follow me on Twitter Twitter Id: @gopinathmm

We are encountered with the question “How many languages do you know?” in a form for employment, it is accompanied by a grid “Read – Write – Speak”. One is expected to tick-mark the grid to indicate one’s proficiency in the listed languages. However, there ought to be one more – “Think”. Just think about it! Which language do you think in? If you think in any one of those languages and speak in the other, chances are you’re producing some top-class humour for us to counter the burden of stress in our lives!

Most of the mistakes – allow me to call them mistakes for the moment – in language usage - because of thinking in one language and speaking in another! Although modern day language is tolerant in which the world brushes aside wrongful constructs in language with the broad stroke of the “trendy” wave sweeping our tongues! There is no such thing as “wrong English” today! Only the ‘new norm’ – an equivalent of the American “new normal” in financial economic trends! A euphemism to lowering standards, I suppose?!

The new normal or norm is the ratification of what was considered wrong some years ago. Now, now – I say some years “ago” – when the world has gratefully accepted “some years back”! Back in my childhood days, “some years back” would have seen my back against a wall as punishment or maybe I would be lumped back home, I don’t know… but not so today! It is the new norm! But I digress – my post is not about correct or wrong language – but about the language in which we think!

Ok, so we have a language in which we think and chances are we choose only one amongst the languages that we speak, read and write – only one! I learnt about this when I was in school – my English teacher, Leela Rebello (nee Yellur) – we called her Yellur-miss, told us:
“If you want to improve your English – Think in English!”

Now that was something! Didn’t we all think in English, I wondered? We spoke our mother-tongue at home – Konkani for me – Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and so on, for my classmates. We learnt English, Marathi, Hindi and French in school. So which language did we unconsciously choose to think in?

It invariably turned out to be the language we learnt in our early days – our mother tongue! So we had great fun in school where some one would exclaim: “See - the rain is falling!”, when all that was to be said was “Look, its raining!”. So the Marathi “Pavoos Padto” or closer to me, the Konkani “Paavsu Padtaa” became “Rain is falling” Our teacher was right! The language we spoke was just a translation of what we thought in our mother-tongue and dutifully translated in the language we were speaking in! And thereby produced some national humour for everyone to laugh at!

“Fun happened at her birthday party!”, “Problem became in class”, “They are removing photos of everyone for IDs” and many such gems were contributed to the national cause of reducing stress-related diseases in our country by these epic utterances! These are classic cases of thinking in our mother-tongue and speaking in English! Of course, we did not stop at this kind of mistakes and produced more gems – like some of my friends would advise the other “Don’t say ‘removing photos’ it’s wrong – say they are ‘photo-takeouting’, na baba!”

OK, so we were creative in our days back then, when it came to producing some hilarious (albeit, wrong) language. Back then a trend began where wrong usage like “Open the doors of the windows and let the atmosphere come in” kind of-coinage is so popular that it even today’s youngsters swear their professors said it! Like we did!

The Chinese today are grappling with the same problem as they embark on the task to conquer the English language for better global prospects – where the meaning of the message is altogether lost. Several posters are found where the reader is lost – “lost in translation” as they say. But we Indians lost nothing – only just found – “found in translation” – great gems of humour.

My friends on FB are quick to point out how news readers ask “What’s your sense on this?” when they actually mean “What is your opinion on this?” or “At this point in time” which used to be simply “now” in the good old days and many more such ‘trending’ habits that have influenced our language today. But then, one wonders if these are from some other Indian languages, I am not familiar with? If not, maybe it deserves another post – for there are many of this kind!

I hope by reading this post, you’d say, “Fun came, no”?! as in, Kyoon, Maja aaya na?

Blogger’s Post-Script: 1. If you know such classic cases of "Found-in-Translation", do post them in the comments column - lets have a compendium of these!
I will not remind you againg - or else you will say "You are behind me!" -eeks another!

2. I attribute the gems of advice given by my teachers, like Yellur-miss in school – St Lawrence High School, Santacruz (W) Mumbai - as those that made me what I am today. I just cannot thank them enough!

Edited to add: Ms. Jyoti Divgi has sent in these Puneri gems:
1. His cycle went to chori
2. Dont speak in front of my back!
Thanks, Jyoti - waiting for many more from all of you!

Book Review: "Childhood Daze!" by Savitri Babulkar

Book Review: “Childhood Daze!” by Savitri Babulkar
Reviewed by: Gopinath Mavinkurve
Follow me on Twitter: @gopinathmm

"Childhood Daze!” is a book that takes the reader back into the days spent in Manjeshwar, a coastal town in South Kanara, now a part of Kerala. A large joint family living in a sprawling house with an abundant courtyard in which one grew vegetables and fruits – and even herbs for household cures - for one’s own needs; where one could climb trees, play games like Lagori, Kutti Donne [viti-dandoo in Marathi], Gazgae- games played in those days of yore, that our present generation kids wouldn’t even know how to play! The book narrates several incidents that played out in those days when “Ammanoo” (as she was called, amongst other loving names) grew up in the 1940s. The stories have been narrated through the mind of 6-9 year old Ammanoo, who sets out to tell the readers of her experiences as-they-happen and things as she perceived them (then) or the anxieties, fears, aspirations and ideas – right or wrong – that influenced the young one.

Going beyond the mere description of the sprawling estates, where the joint family dwelt, she describes in great detail how each member of the family played a part in the household – and more importantly to fill the void left by the early demise of her mother at a tender age of one! It is also the period of her life when she grapples with the meaning of life - the social beliefs and how her grandmother (Avva/Amma to her) deals with them; the rules and why they existed; of schooling and the competition that prevailed; religious beliefs and how some ‘miracles’ impressed the young one early in life. And how can one miss out the ghosts? They tormented the little minds when they had to venture out in the dark making her chant to the gods for protection! There are some episodes brushing obliquely about the scourge of untouchability and other such superstitious beliefs as “the sins of crossing the seven seas”, as they manifested in society in those days – and how the forward thinking women helped root them out with their rational thinking and practical approach to life – without so much as a need to protest from the oppressed/affected persons.

There have been some outstanding character sketches drawn out so lucidly for the reader – who may not have met them – of each of the members of her large family and friends – that very few writers can portray so succinctly. But the characters of Avva or Amma (her grandmother) is par excellence – when she describes how a minimally educated woman of those times teaches the very same things that her convent teachers do in class - and displays such worldly wisdom that very few educated persons possess! How small little rules of the house mattered: the practice of eating together during dinner time, cleaning up before entering the house, keeping things in their place – all contributed to an orderly stress-free life!

The reader is treated to a liberal sprinkling of humour whenever the opportunity presents itself - and of course, word play! To quote Shri. Sadanand Bhatkal, the renowned publisher and editor, who has provided the ‘Foreword’ for the book, her work is “a lucid prose with a delightful ease of narration… brevity being the soul of good-story-telling” . Need I say more? Now, without giving away too much about the book in my enthusiasm, (and thereby spoiling the fun for prospective readers of this amazing book), let me assure you that you will enjoy the journey back into the past to the places in and around Manjeshwar and Mangalore of the 40 and relive those days while gathering some great insights into the charming life and some pearls of wisdom, en-route!

Although there are several Konkani words used in the process, care has been taken to provide the English equivalents. I am sure this book would prove to be a great read for all – whether one knows her or not, whether an amchi (Konkani) or not, even whether young or old! A book need not have to be a racy crime thriller set in modern urban environs, to be described as being “un-put-down-able” or “a page-turner” - this fascinating book, which gives the reader a peep along with the flavors and smells of the small-town life in the ‘40s - proves this, by being one! Do read the book – you’ll zip past the contents to the very end of it and enjoy it. Like I did!

The book is available at Sterling Book House (Call: 022-22676046 / 22659599); Computer Book Shop (Call 022-6631 7922/23/24); Bookzone (Call 022- 2205 4621/22) for copies of the book.
Publishers: Shroff Publishers & Distributors Pvt Ltd.
Call: 022-4158 4158 E-mail: spdorders@shroffpublishers.com for bulk orders or for details about availability in other cities.
Pp: 215 pages Cover Price: Rs 200/-

How many Annas do we need?

Caution: Long post ahead!

Many years ago, students would be asked “How many Annas to the Indian Rupee?” Not any more. Now the question could be more like “How many Annas to the Indian Revolution?”

Just when we Indians were feeling comfy with the fact that since there were no squares in India, the Jasmine revolution or any other of its kind – even a Lotus, for that matter - would not touch our shores, let alone sweep it - the unexpected happened. A perfect black swan event, could we call it? It was bound to happen and yet nobody expected it to happen!

We just wanted our cricket team to win the ODI Cricket World Cup 2011 - and the boys did it for us! The nation was on a high like never before! All the negativity that the Commonwealth Games or 2G scams had engulfed us had been quickly forgotten in the festivities that followed.

Then came the call from Anna Hazare, the phenomenonal leader of the masses - to which the aam aadmi supported to the hilt. Enough is enough, he said – the endless list of scams and loot of public money has got to stop! We need a law and we shall fight for it, if we have to, was his call to the public. He even chose the manner in which people would go about it – peaceful protests and a fast-unto-death for the proposed Jan Lok Pal Bill. It was a great show of solidarity of the masses with their new-found leader – non-violent, steadfast in its objectives and a rare display of unity. People from all walks of life, cutting across party lines came together – just as they did when they supported the Indian cricket team a week ago!

None of the participants committed any acts of vandalism, as is often seen when political parties organise a street show. No shops shut down – no rickshaws, buses or trains were disrupted, as a “bandh call” usually does. This was no bandh! It was the opening of shut minds and lax bodies that were responding to the call of Annasaheb.

I read editorials about the Jan Lok Pal Bill in several leading and reputed publications. The enlightened and all-knowing journalists voiced their opinion about how the proposed Jan Lok Pal Bill would amount to subversion of democracy. How the Lok Pal would be a creation of an all-powerful body, not elected by the members of the public, who would yield judicial and executive powers of the state, which could be very easily mis-used. They told us that Annasaheb had the right intention and the gumption to take on the powers that be, but had been fighting for a law that was, unfortunately, not the solution – perhaps only another powerful monster to deal with in the future.

Some told us that effective as it was, the fast-unto-death was a threat in itself and the government was held to ransom in giving in to the demands – not a democratic means of getting across your point of view in a democratic set up. The mood of the public was too upbeat to stomach this criticism – Anna was a true hero and none would have anything said against him – at least when he was the only man standing for the common man on the street after being let down by all those who are expected to protect their interest – the elected members of Parliament. At least that was the mood.

All these days, I was reading editorials, opinion columns, blogpost and news-item on the subject. None of them answered the basic questions that I had in my mind as follows:-
1. Are we sure that we don’t have a law to punish the corrupt Rajas and Kalmadis or whoever they were that looted the government exchequer of Lakhs of Crores today?
2. Isn’t there a mechanism to get back the money that has been swindled today without the Jan Lok Pal bill in place? Surely it would not apply retrospectively!
3. Are we to believe that the country has been run for 60 years without a law to punish corrupt ministers or bureaucrats - at any level?
4. How is a new Bill, which is being drafted for the umpteen hundredth time for the last 4 decades help in these past cases?
5. How is it that - whenever we hear about gross violations of the law and misdeeds committed on a large scale or a widely spread phenomenon in our society – we always say that we need a law to deal with it? Don’t we have laws in place to deal with gross violations?
6. Are we fooling ourselves by saying we need laws, when what we should be asking is which is the law that has been violated and what is the punishment for it, what are the means to recover the loot under the present legal framework?
7. Aren’t we helping those who have committed serious frauds of humongous proportions on the entire nation to get away due to this “lack-of-a-law syndrome”, if I may call it so?
8. Although there is no denying the fact that laws need to be tweaked and better laws are needed to replace old laws, this is an ongoing activity and the law-breakers can be dealt with under current laws. Why this focus is being lost in the process for demanding new acts or bills?
9. How many Annas would our nation need to undertake a fast - if the Government only responds to Annas going on fasts?
10. How many Annas make an Indian revolution?

This is not to be construed to mean that we would not need legal reforms or new laws in place of the old creaky ones, we would need them for sure!

But the Jan Lok Pal Bill would need a wider debate and participation of several brilliant minds before it becomes a law - it would need a lot of time and lots and lots of effort and public debate - before it is enacted as a law. When it comes, I do hope it does become an effective tool which serves the nation in the days to come. Until then, it is difficult – nay Impossible for me to believe that there is no existing law to deal with the offenders of serious frauds.

I am sure there are enough laws – what is lacking is the political will and that sense of responsibility and answerability/accountability of the Government to the Indian citizen. The people of India, especially the tax-payers, would feel short-changed if they were told that NOTHING can be done to bring the scamsters to book and recover the moneys swindled from the Government exchequer.

My bad - Whatever!

“Whatever!”, you may be saying, but the word has been voted as 'the most annoying word of the Year' by Americans in the years 2009 and 2010!

The other contenders were:
“like”, which came a close second,
“You know what I mean” at third,
“To tell you the truth” at fourth, and
“Actually” at fifth, according to the ‘Marist’ poll.

The word ‘whatever’ is the most dismissive word, conveying the ‘don’t-give-a-damn’ attitude which is a conversation bump that one can encounter and puts one off. No wonder the word has scored high on the annoyance scale in the poll.

"Like” has several forms. The first is an unnecessary utterance of the word at the beginning of a sentence – or at the end of it. The second form of use of ‘like’ is; “I am like ‘Why are you surprised?’’’ , when you mean” I ‘said’” - or ‘wondered’ ‘responded’ in place of ‘am like’. I find this being commonly used by youngsters today. They seem to find this trendy, although not so by the earlier generations, to which I belong. You know what I mean? In vogue, these days like! Get it?

The next on the list is ‘You know what I mean?’ Ok that phrase becomes a necessity, when one really doesn’t take enough care to be clear about what one wants to say, but want the listener to accept that he has understood, so that one can trundle along in the conversation. It may be annoying to the clueless, who have to nod in agreement, all the same!

Ok, I do, I do, get on with it now!

“To tell you the truth”, - it annoys me too, when I am on the receiving side of the oft-repeated offending admission. But isn’t it a global necessity? Just as a fore-warning to what could be coming – the rare, bitter truth, as it were – which may not go down the alimentary canal of the listener’s conscience? Or for that matter to confess that now, one can no longer tell you the lies for whatever reasons? Unless, of course, nothing really follows of this nature, but the phrase has been used just as a filler in a conversation, it could certainly be annoying – and disappointing.

Actually, i find some other words more annoying than these five contenders. Actually – I mean it! Words and phrases like:
"Absolutely” ,
“Anyways”,
“At the end of the day”
or the more recent manner of accepting faults
- “My bad!”

My problem with “Absolutely” is that it is absolutely surprising to me how one can ‘absolutely’ agree with anything that one says? You may agree just this once, on a specific instance, even be unsure about the agreement. It intrigues me however, when the speaker continues immediately with "Having said that….” “This does not hold ??? Not absolutely then???" I begin to wonder???. But “absolutely” rules!

Anyway – one cannot bring oneself to say what everyone says these days, “Anyways”! It has always been “Any one way” for me – not “Any one of the several ways” as it is commonly used today! Cannot attribute the anyways to Twitter – it is one letter longer! You may shrug off this debate with your more favorite “Whatever!” or “Anyways” and move on with more important matters in life. I stick to ‘Anyway’ – old fashioned, that I am! In fact i have a Anyhows-phobia, for i fear soon they'll unleash the "Anyhows" on us!

“At the end of the day” seems to be the corporate world’s daily dope one cannot live without – other than coffee. At the end of the day, corporate meetings are a drab encounter with heavyweight jargonauts, that can be endured only with lots of coffee - to keep awake. If our brains had in-built counters to keep track of how many times this phrase has been uttered in one's presence by bosses or business barons on news channels, the counter device would explode – probably, at the very beginning of the day itself!

Finally ‘My bad’ is the least expressive phrase to admit a fault. The recipient of this salvo is clueless about what was wrong in the first place! Everyone has their own favorite superfluous word stuck to their psyche that gets repeated as a force of habit. Like ‘actually’, ‘basically’ ‘like’ or ‘you know’ - Some people get so habituated to it, that others then begin calling them "Actually" or "Basically" as a nickname!

As for me, “my bad’ just puts me off! Ok, now this mannerism could be attributed to Twitter, where "my bad" not only suffices, it thrives!

Sorry, my bad….whatever!

And which word annoys you? Do drop in your feedback in the comments space!

Blogger’s Post-script: I do hope you all remember the post on blog monitoring/censorship some time ago where we learnt that ‘Annoying content’ could be blocked by government? I hope these regulatory folks can distinguish between annoying content and content about annoyance!

Do Nothing to Serve Society!

Although the Wikileak’s acts of hacktivism and several journalistic exposes may not support their claim, politicians would like us to believe that they have entered the arena of politics in order to serve the public at large. Without so much as challenging their noble intentions, let us assume that their choice of vocation has been from the deep inherent urge to serve fellow humans on the planet. “What is your contribution to society?”, is the question that one would be confronted with, if you’ve declared your good intentions to the public at large. While a doctor can cite how lives of the critically ill have been saved or the pain and suffering of his patients relieved - and a teacher can boast of the phenomenal success of his or her brilliant students, who have made it big in life upon graduating out of school or college, what can a politician who has pledged to serve society boast of, except, of course, a quantum jump in their wealth and a corresponding depletion of the exchequer?

One wonders whether this question ever troubles anyone who has chosen to get into the field of politics. If coffee-table conversations with colleagues and rickshaw drivers are to be believed, there is no noble deed sought to be done, nor any service to be rendered in the subject profession, but only a host of privileges to be availed of, with good times and high life thrown in for good measure.
Ever since India has evolved as a leader in services rather than a manufacturing giant, the taxation of services has been the focus of the Finance Ministry.
Some years ago P. Chidambaram, the then Finance Minister had jocularly replied to a query about whether lawyers were subject to Service Tax, “I don’t think lawyers provide any service”, he had replied. However, with changing times and a ballooning fiscal deficit posing a threat to the financial health of the nation, the present Finance Minister had to hold the view that a lawyer indeed does “provide service” after all!

“Providing service” therefore differs from “serving people” and thus faces the inevitable threat of coming in the tax net. If politicians were to be seen as “providing service”, the entire amounts paid to the tribe including the amounts en-massed would be subject to tax, I guess. “Serving the nation”, is admittedly different, meant to be a noble act, although regretfully, it is now synonymous with lustful acts of self-aggrandizements by various means, which have been made known to us all by the media. The heap of scams that have descended upon us has created an industry by itself – committees, government agencies, legal experts to investigate them would work seamlessly for decades to come.

One wonders whether the uproar in Parliament over the demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee to investigate the 2G scam, was a blessing in disguise in that no business done - hence no harm done to the depleting Exchequer? In that regard, one is reminded of Milton’s famous quote, “They also serve who only stand and wait”. Perhaps the best we can suggest to our politicians is to take note of these wise words, which, although not really understood all along, have lent some meaning to all those who sought it in these famous quote. After all, it has been our country, India, which has given the world the numeral “zero” and more recently, the concept of a “missed call” resulting in a zero bill – why not add “doing nothing to serve society” to this illustrious list of contributions to global progress? Let us hope to work on it right now, before the Exchequer comes close to being a big Zero and the number of zeros in the scam figures tends to infinity.

Now that’s one Ex the politicians love so much!

Our fervent plea to all Indian politicians:
Please do nothing - to serve us!