Declaration of assets in Bihar: how to boast about your wealth after 28th February?

Declaration of assets in Bihar: how to boast about your wealth after 28^th February?

by Majority Bihari Prasad

Please don’t misunderstand! I don’t believe in corruption. Corruption is not a matter of belief but of practice. It’s just that I like the idea of having more money than I should be having, according to those whom I despise with complete whole-heartedness. And I like to have more money than I had a minute ago every moment in my life.

And too, I like to have more money than you that is!  Rest assured, I also believe in playing on level field – meaning I take pride in making more money than you only if in my judgment we have the same level of opportunities to make the damn stuff! In brief, I believe in fair comparison. I am not claiming to be richer than Lavasa, afterall!

My role model is my current PA whose real estate purchases I have proved unable to beat. Every time I look at the properties he owns all over north India, Mumbai and Bangalore, I grit my teeth with envy, while he grins and tells me – ‘sir, its all yours for the asking!’ this is giving me a serious inferiority complex these days. On the other hand, if your role model gives you an inferiority complex, you must be on the right track in life.

Today I am feeling very depressed. My role model cum assistant has put in front of me the asset declaration form provided by the Bihar government. I try to overlook it. But every time he comes to leave a file on my table, he pushes it further under my nose.

The asset declaration form makes me look so small.

First, I am supposed to know how much I have – why is Nitish rubbing my proud nose in this bureaucratic muck? I have no idea, except that my assistant cum role model has more than I do!

I don’t even have a sense of quantity. All I know is more! Nitishji, please, I am a human being, not a soulless calculator!

I ask my wife – ‘how much gold do you possess’?

In reaction, she giggles. And then she turns glum and goes into a sulk. ‘You don’t love me anymore! That’s why instead of bringing home more, you ask me how much you gave me in the past’.

I look at the categories of assets – movable, immovable, and get very confused. The diamonds on my wife’s ears seem movable because she is angrily shaking her head. My movable fleet of fifty Boleros, hundred Honda Citys, two hundred Swifts operating between Mumbai and Goa are sitting still in garages at this very hour according to the latest sms from my Mumbai man, which makes them immovable for several hours. My twenty one duplexes in Vashi, Mumbai seem movable since they are just a signature away from a sales transaction. My, my, my, I must stop now!

Trying to distinguish between movables and the immovables, I feel so moved, I shed three fat drops of tear on my asset declaration form before wiping the rest with government issue A4 bond paper. Suddenly, the door curtain ruffles up violently and my assistant rushes in – he is crying like a child who’s banged his toe against a wall.

I forget my own misery and ask him ‘why, what happened to make you cry’?

My role model cum assistant sat down and gathered himself.

‘Sir, I never told you how ashamed I felt making side-money all these years. It was so easy, too easy, and too automatic! It was a luxury so far, thanks to all my bosses over the years including you. But Nitish has transformed me altogether now. Now every corrupt lakh we make will be hard work. Sir, I have found a new meaning and purpose in life, thanks to our new CM’, he said and began touching my feet repeatedly, like a serial killer stabbing his victim eighty three times.

I held him by his shoulders and raised him, making him sit in a chair.

‘Are you with me in this new journey of life, sir’, he asks.

And I was my old self again. I am a learner, especially when prodded by my junior. I may not know what to do with money but I know I have to make more and more. I know how to make more under any circumstances!

The genius of corruption is what I am!

And to hell with the world – why should I have to boast about my wealth – let the world find out how much I am worth, if it is so important.

Which is why my slogan now is – ‘muh band rahe, hath khula ho!’ [keep your mouth shut, leave your hands extended].

Peace descended, I begin to fill up the asset declaration form as my assistant dictates – ‘one Fiat car 1968 model, 2 acres of agricultural land, 5 kathas of residential plot in Bihta, and never mind the Chyavanprash jar full of uncut diamonds…’

Wait, wait, I look up and chew a finger nail. How the hell does he know?

‘Just as you know about my cinema hall in Meerut’, he replies telepathically and stares at the wall.

We then stare at each other in mutual admiration and affection. Where is the need to boast of open secrets?