Kay S.'s Blog

Que sera sera

It's been a long time since I last wrote my blog. Since then much has happened. So much so in fact that life seemed uncertain what with the Covid pandemic, soldiers dying trying to defend our borders from terrorists- who never mind what is going on- never seem to take a break from terrorism. You would think that a deadly virus would strike some terror into their hearts! But no, they insist on their terror spree. People are busy with the incident of the black man being shot by a white cop. Any person shot no matter their color of their skin is a matter of concern don't you think? In short the Covid may have wrought changes in nature and momentarily halted the footsteps of global warming, pollution etc but it has brought little or no change in our fellow humans. It is business as usual for them.  Today I'm dealing with a different topic. Dealing isn't the right word. Because there is no way to deal with it. And I'm not the fittest person to deal with it. Recently a young Bollywood actor took his life. Good looking, successful- what made him take such an extreme step? Some say it was depression. He was off his meds. Others say he was alone. Truth is no one really knows. What makes a person in a split second decide that life is no longer worth living. What makes life so intolerable that ending it seems a better option than going on for a minute more. All of us have faced such a moment in our lives. If you haven't, you are one of the more fortunate ones. Life is unbearable. And all those platitudes- this too shall pass, tomorrow is another day, it gets darkest before dawn- I can go on and on, none of those platitudes work. Because reality is- it doesn't get better. Nothing changes. Miracles don't happen. And sometimes life grinds you down. In such case what do you do? What can you do? Everything that makes you human, everything that makes you a sentient being rails against being ground into nothingness. You long to assert your independence as a human by an act of defiance, even if it is the act of ending your life. It is your life isn't it? So you get to decide. One question though. Did you choose to be born? Did you decide when to take your first breath? No. The decision to bring you into existence rests with someone else- your parents, God(if you believe), fate. There is a Hindu saying that birth, marriage and death are predestined. The day of your death is decided the day you were born. To believe in fate smacks of weakness, of cowardice. To cease to act is difficult, next to impossible. We cannot sit around waiting for fate to take a hand. But we can cultivate the detachment Krishna talked about in Gita. Act but be not attached to the fruit of your actions. Easier said than done. I don't know about you but when I act I expect results. And when results do not match my expectations I'm disappointed. And hurt. And depressed. And that's okay. That's normal. But after pushing and pushing at the stone like Tantalus if you cannot take it uphill, give up. Stand aside. It might not get better. But It might not get worse. And even if it does, remember you did not choose life, it chose you. When your time comes, and it comes to all, there will be an end. To everything. Till then say que sera sera and stand aside. Maybe it's time for your pruning. Maybe it will generate new growth in another direction. Maybe it won't. But with time you will stop caring so much. You will grow calluses. And calluses are good. They will help you heal. In ways you don't realize. So don't take that step. If you are alone reach out. If you are not, think of the people who have loved and nurtured you- your parents. If you don't have that, then know this, what will be, will be. And carry on. Don't just give up on yourself. Because you are the one with the responsibility here. Your call. Just make it the right one. Hang on. Help will come. 

Then And Now

Hi! So it's children's day today- 14 November.  And as a children's author and ex- teacher, I've been wittingly and non -wittingly,  expected to do a great deal with children. Things have drastically altered since we were kids. When I look around at today's children I'm awestruck. Truly. They are so smart well informed and savvy. They read books I didn't think of reading, they think of things I never dreamt of. And they have so much more on their plates we didn't have- competition, population explosion with all its after effects. And they also are far more vulnerable emotionally and physically than we were. A terrible complexity has crept into their lives. Perhaps that's why there's a sharp increase in the fantasy genre in the YA and middle school section. Let's face it. In our time we didn't have to be tutored in the difference between good and bad touch. It's a pity that our children are not safe. We worry all the time they step out of their houses. Predators might materialise in any form- their bus driver, the guard, the lift man, just anyone. That wide eyed innocence with which we regarded the world has gone for good. Today TV and video games have replaced outdoor games and diseases in the younger children are on the rise. There's something to be said for the old fashioned outdoor games. Instead I see them being kept indoors and going to school in pollution masks to ward off the pollution. I read about suicides in papers after results are declared. I read about child rapes, about babies being assaulted and I wonder  about the world the children of today inhabit. What can we do as parents, teachers and elders to save our children? Keep them safe? Help them fight their battles in this world where so little makes sense? Honestly? I don't know. All we can do is hold them close and love them no matter what. Teach them that losing is as important as winning. Teach them to respect life in all its forms. Teach them that the real religion is love irrespective of whether you are a Hindu, Muslim or Christian or Sikh. That the color of your skin makes no difference. What matters is who you are inside that skin. And you teach them not by lecturing them. Not by telling them. By doing it. By showing them by example.  If we can show our sons to respect girls and our daughters to take steps without fear or shame, then half the battle is won. This culture of rape can be stopped by mothers instilling in their sons an aversion to physical subjugation and mental humiliation of women. It is centuries old and has its roots so deep that we cannot destroy it completely. It keeps resurfacing time and again. But we can make a beginning. In our homes. With our sons and daughters. Give our daughters wings. And our sons compassion and the understanding that real strength does not come from subjugation. Real strength coming from pulling others up to stand beside you. Not crushing them. Give them the wonder of watching butterflies flitting from flower to flower. Give them the marvel of a sunrise. Give them moments of stillness. Give them repose. Give them peace. Above all, the importance of knowing themselves. Because that is the knowledge that will outlast all. Let us return to them the innocence and wonder that is lost, bit by bit. Return to them the simplicity that childhood used to mean. Surely what was, can be again? Let's all vow to eradicate child rape and teen suicides. Step by step- today on children's day. 

Randomly yours

Usually when I write or think of something, I have a single point of focus. One thing. One subject. But today I'm not going to talk of a single subject. Today I'm just going to go with the flow. Let loose the thoughts jostling in my head. 
Recently, very recently, ;like a few days ago I finished reading two new thrillers- The Woman in The Window By A.J. Finn and Lethal White by Robert Galbraith. I was asked to vote for both books by Goodreads but at that time I couldn't vote for either not having read any of them. But today I can cast my vote though honestly both books are poles apart, their authors having divergent styles. One thing they do have in common. Both books are written by authors who are using pseudonyms. A.J. Finn is the pseudonym for Daniel Mallory who is a book critic (courtesy Google) and Robert Galbraith everyone knows is the pseudonym for J.K. Rowling. And the secondly  both books are thrillers which is my favourite genre.  
So "The Woman In the Window" is a taut racy thriller, the style is terse, sparse, the plot reminiscent faintly of The Girl On The Train. And before you demand: How? Well, in the protagonist who is an alcoholic constantly emptying bottles of merlot to help her deal with her agoraphobia.(fear of open spaces and situations that cause panic). Doused with alcohol and medication she fancies she has witnessed a murder. I finished it in one day- it was that racy. As far as plots go, nothing original because I had guessed the culprit by the second page. Only thing I hadn't guessed was the cause of her agoraphobia.That was a total surprise. The novelty lies in the way Finn uses language- the way he describes a simple umbrella, or Dr. Anna or even the way sun goes down or rises. But he is economical with his words and succeeds in creating suspense in the tradition of thrillers. The references to black and white movies, Gaslight and other Alfred Hitchcock movies may have also tipped the scale in his favour. I'm an Alfred Hitchcock fan too. And black and white movies. I think suspense always looks better in black and white. 
Now "Lethal White" on the other hand is very different: the words are abundant, language classic. It is an enormous descriptive tome with quotations from Ibsen at the beginning of each chapter. Galbraith or Rowling has made every effort to raise the thriller to the level of erudite literature by sprinkling it liberally with French, Latin. She might have thought it would elevate it beyond the 'pop" novels of the riff-raff. The main plot which deals with an investigation into a blackmail of a politician by another has several subplots, one being the relationship between Strike and Robin, among others. Rowling has claimed that she has attempted to write a complex novel but the plot essentially is not complex; again the killer is predictable. But that maybe because I'm a die hard thriller fan and can guess the plot of any novel I read. (Anyway there are only ten possible plots in the world I was taught in my literature class.) Where she excels is in her portraiture- of Strike, Robin, Raphael, Izzy, Charlotte, Billy, Jimmy, Flick and the myriad characters who people her book, but she loses out on the tautness a good thriller should have. I found my attention wandering at times. For instance: The murder takes place only after more than half the novel is over; Robin lays her hands on a letter but doesn't open it till a paragraph later while Rowling takes the reader through a description of Thames. It is an exhaustive novel and I must say I prefer the televised version of her Strike novels. The serials are racier and more interesting than her novels because it does away with a lot of the descriptions which I feel detracts rather than adds. The thriller genre demands a terse delivery, fewer words, tighter suspense. So my vote goes to The Woman In the Window. If you haven't already read it, read it. It's good. 

And on a very very different note: A plea to all those who read this piece. Please start using compost bins at home. Because I pass mounds of biodegradable rubbish heaps every morning while the dumpsters near these piles remain empty. People prefer to fling their rubbish on the road rather than use the dumpsters provided. Instead of providing dumpsters why not dig composting pits in the ground since people do prefer to toss their rubbish on the road? I've bought a bin from Amazon and have successfully used the compost for my plants on two occasions. Just a small and very humble request towards making our environment cleaner and healthier. 
This year is at an end. The new one is around the corner. How about a new You? Read something new, wear something new, do something new. Even if it is just a small thing like buying a compost bin. Baby steps towards saving that gigantic thing we call our earth, our world. 

It happens only in India?

Hi there! Writing again after a long gap. Thoughts came; thoughts went. I didn't find anything worth writing about. Today is Janmashthami. Independence Day passed by weeks earlier. I've been thinking and thinking very seriously about being Indian and what it means. To me. Because I belong to a generation that is neither here nor there. I speak a language that belongs to another country, I wear clothes that are pretty much worn by the rest of the world. So what is it that makes me quintessentially Indian? I never anticipated that it would be so difficult. Not only do I speak in English most of the time interspersed with Bengali, I also think in the language like my mother observed. I've to keep searching for words in my mother tongue whereas it is so much easier to write and read in English. It ought to have been my second language but like many people of my generation and the succeeding generations it is not the case. I'm a bit of a mongrel as one of the characters in my stories observed. Rootlessness is typical of our generation irrespective of the country we belong to, but India itself has been subject to myriad influences -ruled by so many different invaders that to isolate anything purely Indian might not be possible anymore. There's the Mughal influence, the British, the Portugese(Goa), the French (Pondicherry)- the list is endless. So then let's just get down to it. What do I understand by being Indian?1. Religion. We are a very religious country. Or we used to be. Lately, religion seems to be losing much of its hold unless it is to riot in the name of religion and fling mud at each other using it as an excuse. A roadside tree hacked to death sprouted new leaves along with a number of small shrines nestling at its base with red threads tied around its trunk and a horde of devotees flocking to it every week on Saturday near my house. India is probably the only place in the world where a stone can be worshipped with fervor- such is the power of belief here. Recently though it seems much in abeyance and the rape incidents have increased. From being the mecca of travellers all over world as a spiritual destination India has earned the honor of being the rape country( not only capital) in the world. A reason I find myself hanging my head in shame and finding it difficult to call myself an Indian. Children? Babies? No one it seems is exempt from predators. It is no longer the "golden India"(Jahan dal dal par sone ki chidiya karti hai basera) of my youth. No longer a country where women children,boys or anyone for that matter, is safe. 2. Food. We are a very very food-centric nation. All our festivals and celebrations revolve around food. It might be true of other cultures and countries but India cannot be rivaled in the sheer diversity of our festivals and celebrations and the many dishes these celebrations merit. 3. Mother. Yes. We Indians venerate our mothers. Make no mistake. Women are exploited here, much more than other countries. But the mother occupies a position of power in the household. It is a strange metamorphosis that happens and very interesting to watch. More so if she has spawned the male child. Then she speaks from a position of absolute power. The kitchen and the hearth is most often the center of the house. The mother may or may not be vocal, may or may not be an active decision maker but from behind the pallu the most illiterate mother wields an enormous influence.4. Getting old is easier here. The enormous emphasis that other cultures have on sex and appearance is absent here. Now things are changing. Mummies are becoming yummier. But by and large you can blissfully slide into your "aunty-ness' and live happily with those tires around your waist once you advance in age. Sometimes even before. It is only in the pre- marriage stage that appearance plays an important part. Post marriage and  solid years into marriage you are free to expand. Not only your horizons but your waistline. But like I said things are changing and Indian women too are balking at their slide into aunty-ness. As for me I think this obsessive emphasis on appearance can be daunting at times. It is good to be comfortable with your wrinkles and paunch and incipient baldness. Only in India can an actor like Sanjeev Kumar be revered as a hero, paunch and all. 5. Take it slow. This I think is the most irritating thing about being Indian. Punctuality is not our national character and nothing gets done on time. Dheere- Dheere (Slowly) everything happens. Oh so slowly. Shops open late. Work takes time. Court cases drag on for centuries. If you wish for speed you might as well be dead or on the way to it. Being Indian means having oodles and oodles of patience. Wait. Just wait. Then wait some more. If you are not dead or buried by then. ASAP has no meaning here.6. Public conveniences and public property are always defaced, torn apart, vandalized. We go to DLF mall in Noida, a very posh mall by all accounts, and you can find seats missing back rests within a few months. Then escalators don't work. I strongly think we as public don't deserve the best facilities because we don't take care of the ones provided to us. 7. Children. We don't push our young ones out of the nest when they turn eighteen. Living at home even when you are twenty five or thirty or beyond, is acceptable and not an oddity. Mothers may treat their children as babies even their hair has turned grey. Fathers may freely offer advice and exert control over their children even they are beyond the adult age. This is very Indian. Off hand these are the things I think are unique to being Indian. At least what makes me Indian. What about you? What do you think?   

Woe-man or Wo-Man?

Women can be roughly divided into two categories( pigeon-holing again) - Woe-men ie. those who love to suffer or live to suffer (god knows which) and wo-Men those who decide that the only way to outwit men is being being men and doing what they do. Right from the time of Mother India(movie) or much before that women believed firmly that their lot in life was to shed tears, "To Suffer". That was the only" ring" they had the right to wear. Suffering in silence was supposed to be the sign of strength. To provide them the moral compass required to steer their lives. A woman incapable of suffering was no woman at all. Tears was their weapon- to cajole, manipulate and swing things in their favor. Then came a time when women decided to change the scenario. If men could do it, so could they. Anything men did they did better. Climb mountains, fly planes, smoke, swear, cuss, drink, have indiscriminate sex. These are the wo-Men out to prove that they are in no way less than their male counterparts. The 2018 woman? She's an amalgamation of the two. Sometimes veering one way; sometimes another. Sometimes the victim who gets raped and brutalised. Sometimes the force that topples governments. But has she changed so much from what she was in the past? I was reading One Indian girl by Chetan Bhagat. Yes. I'm always late to the circus. And I was shocked by the so- called successful heroine. A Goldman Sachs VP with crippling self esteem issues she gets drawn into two affairs with two men, both equally unsuitable and her only worry is whether they want to marry her or not. Whether she is attractive enough or not. Her emotional dependency on them is pathetic. She cries buckets when her first boyfriend discards her. She is hurt because her  older boyfriend doesn't see her as a successful mother. For a super successful career woman she ticks all the boxes of the stereotypical woe- man. And though in the end she sends both men packing deciding to take off on a world tour she continues to look for approval of her third man- her arranged boyfriend/ ex-husband. Is that who the modern woman is? Is that who we are inside that so- called sophisticated successful exterior? Then all the education and empowerment has not wrought any change. We are right where we started. 

The right frame

Hi! I would start by wishing you all a Happy New Year except that the new year has come and gone, its tinsel brightness already dulling. But still here it is, Happy New Year! So I was on Linked In yesterday scrolling through idly when I chanced upon a post by someone( I'm sorry. Blame my failing memory for not remembering the name) in which he said (I think it was a he) how he had gone to great lengths and expense to procure a book but having read a few pages/ chapters he had abandoned it for another. He exhorted the others not to feel guilty if they did the same. That started a train of thought in my mind and led me to write this. Take a beautiful painting for instance. How much of its beauty is subtracted if it is not framed right? The painting in itself might be flawless but the wrong frame can make it hideous diminishing much of its beauty. Then it becomes ordinary. Just another piece of art. All of us speak right? All of us write. But how is it some sentences can mean so much that you quote  that speaker while others disappear into the vast cavern of "just words"? So many times I've opened a book, a fantastic book, a book that has garnered rave reviews and then abandoned it halfway because it just didn't strike the right note? Or to be blunt, was plain boring. That is not to say the book or writer is less for it. Sometimes I've read a book that no one has taken any note of and it has spoken to me in ways that books speak to readers.It is just that at that particular moment I wasn't in the right frame of mind to appreciate that book. Maybe I was too hassled and was looking for light relief. Or that book was all light relief, and I needed spiritual counselling. Or at least something that would add value to my life instead of being just a pot boiler. It is the frame that makes all the difference. ( Even if it's a person you're scrutinizing.)And the right frame can make and break every work of art - whether it is books, movies, or painting, or even music. So next time you abandon a book or think it's not good enough maybe you should grant the author some leeway. Perhaps you weren't in the right frame of mind when you read it. Perhaps going back to it in years months or days you might be able to appreciate it more. Then again you might not think it's worth it. That's for you to decide. I think if framed correctly, seen from the right perspective, everything has a beauty of its own. Even a common potboiler. 

Your island

I've always heard that no man is an island. That man is a social animal. Or words to that effect. But in today's world and age we all need our islands. The lyrics of an old song drift into my head :"Where do you go to my lovely?" So where do you go when you want to be alone in your head? Do you take off for a long walk? Or a hike? Go off on an expensive vacation overseas to unwind? Or simply settle down on your couch or bed to binge watch T.V? Or read a book? Maybe you head to your garden. Yank out a few weeds. Plant a few saplings. Go off on a long drive. We might have different ways of relaxing, of coping with stress but all of us need a space where we can let go and just be. While the world around you might be exploding into mayhem and madness what is the only thing you hold on to? Me I read books. That's my island. My space. There is so much that is wrong with the world today. There is so little any of us can do about it. People killed in Texas, people dying in Iran quake, school boy murdered in Ryan- ugly disturbing things. Gone are the days when we could sit in our homes and say complacently- how does nuclear testing in Korea threaten us? How does a church full of people gunned down in the US affect us? The world is shrinking. It is invading our homes. We cannot be impervious to anything that happens anywhere in the world. Be it France, England, US, China, or India. The social media has seen to it. And in such a scenario all of us need an island we can turn to. Where we can drink of the cup of forgetfulness and be selfish. I say it is not natural but imperative that we do so. To hold on to our sanity. To be in touch with ourselves. Because unless you have an island somewhere inside of you or out of it you can retreat to, life becomes pretty much unbearable. Then man kills man, countries go to war, worlds disintegrate. Mayhem and madness happens. Search for that island which gives you your slice of self, that momentary reprieve, that escape and forgetfulness all of us crave but few admit to craving, and go there. If even it's only in your head. For it's your special space in this great big world. Your island. 

Of plants and lessons learned

Hey there! It's been a long time since I wrote. So long in fact that my account was closed! So this is me posthumously. (Sigh!) What it is to die before you actually die! Like I said before there's little to say if you've nothing really to say. And my last post was around Christmas last year I think. See. It's been that long. I can't even recall. Okay. So here's what I want to share. I like greenery. I like plants. Stationary enduring eternal. There's something wonderful about them. Yet they are so transient. Flowers bloom wither then bloom again. So it's about a certain plant in a pot in my terrace. The most humble of all plants. The most common. Frangipani. Plumeria. Champa. It has many names for such a common plant. I'd grown this plant from a cutting taken off the roadside in my colony brought to me by my chowkidar. The cutting grew into a healthy vigorous plant. It had nice glistening green leaves and a fat healthy trunk. But it refused to flower. Year after year I waited with baited breath. In vain. It remained stubbornly green without a single flower to crown my efforts. I waited and waited. I fertilized it. Watered it. Assiduously showered it with my TLC. Five years passed. Several plants in the interim flourished and perished. I had a hard time deciding if I had green fingers or brown fingers or decidedly black fingers. My successes were few; failures legion. My cactus bloomed generously; so did a few others. Many died. I watched gardening videos; scoured google to find ways to make it flower. Tried to shock it into flowering. By watering it then withholding water. Believe me I left no stone unturned. Finally I gave up. And forgot about it. Totally. Completely. Then a month ago after a rainy day I happened to peep out of my kitchen into the terrace which is adjoining. And lo and behold I saw a crown of flowers. I couldn't believe my eyes. I went out, peered suspiciously at the buds, touched them to verify then still skeptical went inside. Maybe the buds wouldn't flower after all I thought. But they did. A month later they are still flowering. What is the point of all this you may ask? No point really. Plumeria blooms by the roadside with little or no care. It's the hardiest plant around. But my plant taught me a valuable lesson. Sometimes it's better to let go. To stop trying. To just do your bit and give up. Maybe there's a time for everything. A time to flower. A time to win. A time to fail.  A time to fall. A time to rise. And maybe your efforts will pay off. In the end. Whenever it is. And sometimes neglect is a healthy thing and not caring the right thing. Maybe caring too much can ruin things. So take a step back relax and turn away. Who knows just when you are at your wit's end and about to give up you may just succeed? 

REALITY FICTION

So I've been thinking a great deal about this idea of reality fiction and yesterday while watching a U-tube video I heard the same idea reiterated. The man who was talking about writing in general and screen writing in particular claimed that you can write about heartbreak only if you get your heart broken. And that your writing should be drawn from real life. I beg to disagree. I've been hearing this for so long that I thought I would address this topic today. Is writing a mirror of life? Yes. It is. Is fiction an imaginative piece of work? Yes it is. Then does it follow you cannot mirror life if you are writing fiction? No. It doesn't. Because that's where imagination comes in. Let us not deride imagination. It is a powerful tool in all creation. It helps us in creating situations, people who might not be real, but simulate reality. All actors do that. Enact people or situations which might be far removed from their reality. I think that makes them good actors. To be able to imagine themselves into their roles. They don't actually have to murder people to act as murderers. To commit crimes to portray criminals. To actually suffer heartbreak to portray it. Good actors simulate. So why should writers be any different? They cannot actually live the characters they create except in their imagination. In my opinion writers are not so different from actors. They too simulate. To say that you are a good writer only if you have lived your writing is to say you cannot write for instance, about the first world war because you were never born in that period. For that you must research your topic. Then use your imagination to dress that research. That's how a book is created. And it is in my opinion a very myopic way of looking at things to say you must write from real life. Your imagination is also very real, let's not forget. To you in your mind. The murderer in your book is as much as part of you as the hero. Because you have created them. You have given birth to them. Birthing you'll agree is the most real the most potent the most primeval connection in the universe. Nothing can transcend the bond between a mother and her child. In that sense all fictional characters are real. And what happens when a writer writes using only reality? Then he  becomes severely  limited. Because he cannot imagine beyond the scope of his experience. It means if I'm a campus writer I can  write only campus novels. If I'm from the corporate world I can only write about it. And that is where limitation comes in. Just because I was a schoolteacher I can only write about it and nothing else? It seems to be an absurd argument. Does my work becomes less because it is purely fiction ? Does it automatically become better if it is autobiographical in nature? No. I don't think it does. The best books I've read have not been autobiographical in nature but imagined pieces of work. That is my observation. That is my argument. I rest my case. You may or may not agree. This is what I think. What do you think?

Money, money, money!

We are in the throes of change. That's what we are being told. These long queues outside banks and ATMs are mere hiccups. Who are you kidding? Have you seen any of the queues? The insane rush to the banks? Because ATMs do not have sufficient cash? I know. I know. Papers are full of it. Go cashless. Banks, leaders, newspapers-(anyone and everyone)are telling you. Sure ready to go cashless. But how will you pay the domestic helps? Some of them don't even have bank accounts. For those who do you can wire money into their accounts through EFT. But and this is a BIG BUT you have to go into a bank, fill a form and drop it to do that. For every transaction now you have to go to the bank. And you can't get into the Bank. AT ALL. Hundreds are lining up from four in the morning. Some I'm told are sleeping at the banks. Yesterday after watching the news and hearing that ATMS will be up and functioning only after 28 days I rushed to the bank today. Luckily my driver helped out by standing for an hour and a half. I only deposited money. Mark you I did not exchange anything. No cash. Now I've no idea how our domestic helps will be paid next month. Anyone listening? These are poor people. They need money to eat. Most don't own smart phones so downloading Paytm app and singing paytm karo is useless. How do they get paid? I've also heard from people that only 2500 is being allowed to each person even with a cheque. So how are we going to survive on a few measly rupees when EVERYONE is dealing in CASH? The milk vendor is paid in cash, the vegetable vendor,(you name it)they want cash. EFT is possible with net banking but most Indians are afraid to because their accounts maybe hacked. Check recent credit card fiasco. Just some questions for you, Mr. Prime minister. Sweeping reforms require planning and forethought. There is still time. Till dec 30. Usher in a joyful year. Find solutions to problems because admit it or not the really rich are not affected. They do net banking. Their employees have bank accounts. For the rest it is - Money, money , money.