Selling memories a crime

It was a thriller-of-sorts video game enacted on an unusual sunny holiday. The invasion of a few strangers into my two-bedroom humble apartment turned things upside down and caught me and numerous cockroaches and other parasites, who shared the paradise, off guard. They, a poker-faced scrap paper dealer (raadiwala) and his zero-size better half, proclaimed their mission--- the 'Operation Junk'--- with their missile-paced movements inside the house.
From a raadiwala's point of view, every house has a hidden treasure trove inside. The lion's share of contribution comes from huge heaps of newspapers reminding umpteen tragedies and incidents of historical importance. Adding glitz is magazines with celebrities' speeches that left millions speechless over the past decades and collections of not-so-easy-to-digest articles that you plan to read on a fine day when you are absolutely free. The hurry-burry urban life often makes reading the “bundle of information” every morning a few minute headline-gulping exercise. Books eat up a major portion of storewell cupboards and book racks. Supplements and advertisements run into many glossy paper sheets also pitch in to build an unappealing castle of paper in every household.
Who led the anti-junk gang was my warring spouse who had many a times warned of putting even the house on fire, just because I refused to dispose off even a single piece of paper. Apart from books with fingerprints of countless friends and acquaintances, diaries dated to past years of anarchist bachelorhood occupied an almirah. Handwritten letters reminding the faded love of the yesteryears hid themselves inside the crumbled diaries, presumably with an inferiority complex in the e-mail era. She heartlessly called it junk, and graciously shed tears lamenting over marrying a person who is wedded with newspapers. My valuable possession, which invariably intertwined with my childhood, has indeed received disdainful glances from visitors. The irresistible affection towards newspapers started long before the arrival of the paperless revolution and also my wifeless years. My grandfather, a living encyclopedia of his time, had irrepressible appetite for reading. Books of diverse genre adorned wooden shelves of his spacious library. One could dig out even decade-old newspapers from the neatly wrapped bundles. At his twilight years, much before the sun shows up its bright face on the sky, he could be seen near the gate awaiting the newspaper boy. Holding his fingers, many times I had dreamt of becoming a newspaper boy, whom I thought, the most-wanted person in the life of my grandfather. Old habits die hard. In the passage of time, dailies and books have become my best accompaniment. Many have worn to shreds, but the dusty, archaic papers had a smell of unconditional love that embellished with childhood memories.  The battle has already begun. Reminding a video game of Ra-One type, the womenfolk armed with 'Hit' mercilessly pounced on the unwanted occupants. The army of ants and cockroaches who vigorously marched towards other rooms had to relinquish. The innate womanly traits made my wife hate all kinds of harmless worms, and she had a blow-hot, blow-cold relationship with book worms. Newspapers flew in the air like rockets. Some half-naked, half-torn sleazy magazines tumbled out of the closets of bygone teenage days. Nevertheless to say, they got a special treatment more than it deserved from the raadiwala. More such gems might have tucked away inside. I realise discretion is always better than valour. After hours of backbreaking digging, bundles of papers were filled into sacks and cardboard boxes. It's time to bid adieu to the priceless possession. My ladylove, who gleefully sold even my 'hundred years of solitude' to a raadiwala, looked jubilant. Tranquility prevailed all over. True, peace comes at a price. Having lost the paradise I was so used to, I lost sleep that night. Fond memories wiped out. Who will tell the world selling memories is a crime?

We are like this only

A considerable number of pages in the history have been dedicated to narrate the countless battles of ambitious men for pretty women and precious land. The temptation is boundless and people,
like bees drawn towards honey, indulge in mad scramble to posses land. What stands testimony to
this fact is that the ever-increasing number of land scams involving many politicos and skyrocketing
prices of land. A piece of land is strong enough to kill the peace of the entire world.Well, what left me perturbed is a piece of paper that I received from the Revenue department recently. It represented the sordid tale of red-tapism and the lackadaisical attitude of the bureaucrats. After taking its own sweet time, now the department has asked us to pay Rs 2,000 related to a land deal dated back to 1992. A long 19 years had been passed and too much water has flowed under the bridge since then. The “icing on the cake” was the deadline of five days and if fail to repay, they were all set to initiate revenue recovery process. The story is set in a Kerala village in the 1970s. Long before the land-hungry people dived into the money-spinning real estate business, my grandfather was a landlord, having nearly 80 acres of agricultural land. Elephants hardly realise their might, so did my grandpa. Despite helping hundreds of labourers of all castes and creed to eke out a living at his farm, he was tagged as a “bourgeois” by the erstwhile Communist rulers. At a time when landlords are considered harbingers of capitalism, an ideology that faced stiff resistance from the working class, it was indeed an undisputable argument. When the Communist government revolutionised the land scenario in the state, my grandpa had little choice, but to give up 20 acres, arguably for the cause of landless people. There was consolation too. Each acre was valued as per the government standards and was given a meager Rs 100. So grandpa’s 20-acre loss was compensated with Rs 2,000. Some others had better plans to hoodwink the government. Registering lands in numerous benami names was one among them.The story had a follow up. Years after, my father, a born legal warrior he was, took up the issue and embarked on a legal battle to get back our lost land. The wearisome process that reached the Supreme Court finally bore fruits and two acres was given back. Years passed by. Both my grandpa and father are no longer with us. Call it Anna Hazare impact, an official in the Land Board wanted us to return the compensation given for the returned land
forthwith. The due which was just Rs 200 in 1992 has apparently gone up further. The department,
which had a “technical error” not recovering the amount then, had no qualms whatsoever to add an
interest of the past 19 years that marked their inefficiency. It has now become Rs 2,000.
We neither had archaic documents to prove that our forefathers had paid the amount, nor time
to go for another legal battle to drive our point home. Having learnt a few basics of the cobwebbed land rules, now I look upon myself as someone nothing less than an enlightened landless lord. In fact, I have developed an aversion towards the dusty, mind-numbing land records. The thought was why should we pay price for the mistakes of our “hardly working” babus. Given that the so called bureaucracy is a necessary evil, it is understandable that there is no need to brood over the issue, but sacrifice my hard-earned money (though one can argue that the amount could not even earn me a Johny Walker moment) and bury the matter forever.