May 14, 2024
The buzzer reads ‘RED’—Uncle Sam has been caught off-guard!
Was it the fault in the stars or did the misbegotten cadence of inappropriate humor fell heavily on his head; the stars following an invisible thread straight from cartoon strips, phosphenes being the cause for the bizarre phenomenon. Albeit for Uncle Sam, the poisoned chalice is the reason to be alarmed—receiving a pooh-pooh by the BJP bellicose, and Congress in no mood to invite the aflutter.
Sam Pitroda, the chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress, must be leading a reasonably good life but now carries an enormous debt for the evasion of the tax de rigueur. I wonder if he inherited the ‘demystifying dejure’ from observation or experience. I can hear the song, ‘A change is gonna come’ by Sam Cooke; the ‘I’ in the arabesque is knocking hard to pursue life being offered, but realizes the heart belongs to somewhere else. The song furtively styles a more socially revived human pattern that fails to question the promiscuity of belonging.
Quite touching! But I guess Uncle Sam took the rudderless boat too far at the time when the Lok Sabha election storm is pummeling the tornadoes and the cumulonimbus roars of whataboutery fills the sky rallies. ‘Do me no good—Do me no harm’; he must have echoed to get the boat safely to the anchorage. The conceited optimism did not offer anything good, lest the political savior faire taxed him for his aberration.
Levying ‘Inheritance Tax’ is debatable. In a country like India, where inheritance is waited with impudence, a tax of such nature is a comeuppance for the wait. It is definitely not a fair proposition. Let’s say if half of the inheritance is kept by the government, the wealth thus accumulated & distributed among the not so privileged calls for a conscious referendum of selectivity. The inheritor thus lives abandoned in the furtive lure of being called an altruist; if one were to look at that state, the survival ahead would be a like a reluctant bird standing on a narrow rail in need to be pushed to fly.
The intention is deeply entrenched to follow the likes of America but how do you fill the lesion patch of ignorance and a sense of depravity in a country like India. All this is being rude to the ‘departure of the dead’. Let the living live in peace and no ‘tax’ do us part from the wealth.
Uncle Sam apart from the wealth whimsy has found a new epithet for nationalistic pride. The cumulative paroxysm of the Chinese reflection of the people in East and the Arab appellation of the people in the West side of India; all this finds an ad nauseam. I am still told on certain occasions that I look like a foreigner and I am at loss of words how to respond; the puncture right through my nose finds an intuitive need to dissect the Indian pride in me.
How could the ‘Sam Pitroda’ be so acquiescent? A Capella now finally receives animadversion of the ‘divide in diversity’. One could have been soft and subtle;
‘People in the East look like fresh daisy; in the West, they look like a cantata of festive jubilance; in the North, people look like munificent landscapes, and in the South, they are soloist subtly invoking the rhythms of nature’.
Isn’t the arabesque a wholesome paen of our prosperity, and definitely not the ‘whites’ & the ‘Africans’ casuistry?
Finally, a goodbye to Uncle Sam for his impropriety who resigned from the Indian Overseas Congress for the racial storm! Let the wealth of our forefathers be protected and enjoyed.
‘Zindagi ke saath bhi, Zindagi ke baad bhi’