I STILL HAVE MY TWO OLD 500-RUPEE NOTES










“Have you noticed how many people, who walk in the shade,
curse the Sun?” 

I still have in my drawer two old 500-rupee notes. Sometime in Jan, this year – that was after the last date given to us to exchange the old notes for the new ones or to deposit the old notes into our bank account – yes, one evening in Jan, this year, I found in an envelope these two notes…

“What to do with these?” I asked my wife…

“Keep them safely,” she said with her tongue firmly in cheek “they may fetch us a fortune when we become very old.”

Yes, ‘old’ often becomes ‘gold.  Maybe, as my wife has predicted, if I keep these two 500-rupee notes safely for thirty years or so, they may go as rare antiques… Some historian or some crazy antiques-addict  may come searching for my old notes...  I need to be patient, I know.

At times, I just forget that we do not have the 500-rupee and 1,000-rupee notes anymore in circulation. So, a month ago, while I was withdrawing cash at my bank counter, I innocently requested the cashier, “Give me two crisp notes of 1,000.”

And, I waited…

He started looking at me as if to ask me, “Why… What will you do with them?” Or, “Where did you come from?”

So, I told him, “Got two functions to attend.” I was still innocent… hoping he would understand that I needed to put 1,001 in two separate envelopes as presents…

The man behind me tapped my shoulder, “Sirji, hazar ke notes bandh ho chuke hai!”

By then, I had collected the cash and run out of that place!

On 8th November, last year, my wife and I were in a hotel room in Wayanad, Kerala. We were on a vacation to Wayanad, Coorg and our hometown Mangalore. When I switched on the TV casually, that night, I heard PM’s speech…

A chill ran into my bones that moment… It really sounded to me just the way Mrs. Indira Gandhi had declared Emergency on 25 June, 1975!

I felt it was too insensitive to ignore millions and millions of people while taking that radical step. My wife was chilled out… She tried to convince me about the rationale: the black money will go, the corruption and terrorism will end, the country will go cashless, digital… everyone will  come  into the banking system, the Income-tax net will widen and so on.

But, I wasn’t convinced at all.

I neither understood politics nor economics. But, I understood one thing: My countrymen lived more in villages and remote places than in cities and towns… My country had more poor and lower-middle-class people than middle-class people, leave alone the rich and the super-rich. I got chills imagining the kind of hell this vast majority might have to go through… I knew, that the real culprits with stacks of black money would find ways to convert them into white… that, they would  never, ever stand in the serpentine queues the way the innocent people would…

And, that’s exactly what happened.

Today we complete one year since that day – ‘The Demonetization Day’….

Most of us are as black and as white as we had been always… We still carry cash as we used to before… Terrorists still strike… From a peon in a government office to top politicians, from a hawaldar to his top bosses… from a roadside vegetable vendor to the up-market real-estate developer… yes, I don’t think any of us has changed our stripes since Demonetization… I don’t think any of us drops cheques in the donation boxes of our temples, churches and shrines… nor do pay  through Paytm or cards, there…

We are where we were a year ago… I am where I was a year ago!  I have not experienced the trauma of so many people who had to lose their businesses and jobs… I have not experienced the suffering of the families of people who have died during this time…

Yes, many like me have managed to tide through the situation. We, as a nation, have managed to tide through, too. Our patience, tolerance and optimism, perhaps, are our greatest strength. We are a hopeful nation…

If economy has tanked today, it will surely surge as years roll by… In the long run, everything changes… even though, as Keynes famously said, “In the long run, we are all  dead!”… That includes our Modiji and Jetliji… Manmohan Singhji and Chidambaramji… you, me and our fellowmen, all… Yes, in the long run, we all will be dead and gone!

Meanwhile, we will continue to live with our old habits of incessently thinking how to make more money and how to secure our future… Won’t we?

As for me, I have these two old notes of 500, very safely kept in my drawer as my wife has advised… yes, with the childlike hope, that they may fetch me a fortune… in the long run!

A happy ‘Notebandi Day’ to all…. To each his own: If you are for it, ‘An Anti-black money Day’… If you are against it, ‘A Black Day’… Yes, as they say.

But, let’s remember this:, tomorrow will be another day… and, in the long run, all black becomes white and all white becomes black…

Therefore, let’s celeberate Life, friends… ‘black’ or ‘white’!


GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: Internet

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