The month of June is hot, as it has to be. But it was the heat of a different kind. The ceiling fan and desert cooler were fighting a losing battle to induce some comfort in my room. Now, I must make it clear that it was not the first summer of my life, nor was I dropped all of a sudden from the cool climes of Kashmir to the blazing deserts of Bikaner. It was perhaps the disquiet of my heart that made me feel so hot. If only Kaga Bhushundiji could solve my problem! I thought wistfully. And in that very instant, the good old crow was there, hovering over my head. It took me a few moments to realize that the rush of wind in the room was thanks to the flapping of his wings and not because of my rickety fan and the cooler, which had stopped working altogether in his appearance. ‘Kagaji,’ I shouted at him irritably, ‘for Ramji’s sake, stop pestering me. I am already tense. Do sit somewhere, please.’
‘Sit where, son? There is no spot in this cluttered room of yours even for a crow to perch on!’ Kagaji was quick to pay me back in my own coin.
Kaga Bhushundi SpeakEth
Suman K Sharma
I looked around. The room was indeed at its disorderly worst. Leavings of the last evening’s meals on the dining table, heaps of dailies and magazines beside me on the bed, my lap-top over the pillow, a wet towel on the top of the switched-off TV….The maid had not come till then and I was in no mood in that oppressive heat to tidy up the room. Reluctantly, I got up from the bed, flung the towel from the TV top aside and motioned Kagaji to sit there.
Kagaji obliged me readily and asked, ‘Tell me what is eating you up?’
His commiseration was touching. Sweating profusely, I told him of my woes. Back in April, Income Tax Department had sent me an SMS that my last year’s return was defective, and ever since I had been trying to figure out what it was all about. Each time I consulted the department’s help-desk on the internet; it issued me a new ticket with some jargon and indicated that my problem had been “resolved”. But I was still landed with the return which the department had termed defective.
Kagaji stared at me and said, ‘It’s your fault only. First, you submit a defective return and then you try to resolve the issue on the internet – sab muft mein! Isn’t that silly! Now go to a professional, pay him his fees and have done with the matter.’
‘But Kagaji,’ said I, ‘I am not a businessman or a moneybag who has to find ways to avoid paying taxes whichever way he can. I paid what I had to pay. Then why should I need someone else to file my income tax return for me? I thought filing one’s income-tax return was such a simple and straightforward thing to do.’
‘I wish it was. But you people have made things around you so murky. Look at your room. How disorderly it looks! Even a trash heap would be better arranged.’
‘I thought we were talking of the shape of things in the country and not the untidiness of my personal room,’ shamed by Kagaji, I tried to change the tenor of our dialogue.
‘Your room reflects your country. Nothing is in order here today. There is more filth than water flowing in the Ganga, Yamuna and other rivers. Your towns and cities lack good governance. Your roads go pell-mell. Your forests have been despoiled and your hills denuded….’
‘Bas, bas, Kagaji. I can also see with my two eyes what’s wrong with us. Tell me what we should do to set everything right.’
‘Start with cleaning up! Clean up your homes, offices and public places. Clean up your systems. Do away with the redundancies of the past. Pare your statutes off the obsolete dispensations and infirmities. Shed the mindboggling obscurities in your rule books which afford possibilities of indiscretion to the high and the not-so-high minions of the state. Let ‘make it simple and do-able’ be your mantra. Apply the strong detergent of honesty and probity to wash away the miscellany of corruption in your public and private life. Only then, my son, will you be able to build the Bharat of your dreams!’
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