Now that the annual bloodletting is over and done with, and Caesar has extracted what was his due—and then a wee bit more—I can get back to worrying about my finances and sanity. While my perennially anaemic finances pose no problem, I frequently lose my temper because of the threatening messages that I receive, especially around the time of filing my income tax return.
The initial irritation is caused by the innumerable reminders to file the return. They come as warnings through different channels—email, WhatsApp and SMS. They threaten to heap unspeakable ignominies on me if I do not file the return, but then they end in the whimper that the threat can be ignored if I have already made the mandatory genuflections. Each such message causes a twinge of regret—obviously, those income tax blighters have not been keeping track of my tax declaration. Ergo, they have also not kept track of the tax paid by me. Am I a sucker for having paid it in the first place?
Fellow income tax sufferers can well anticipate my next peeve—the flurry of threats to verify the return in one of six suggested ways, or else! But to please ignore the threat if already done. The hordes of income tax officials who chase me for piddling sums of a few hundred rupees can’t even keep track of the verification executed by me in all six suggested ways? Oh what a fool I have been! I could have indeed gotten away scot-free without paying any tax!
The minions of the finance minister are not the only ones sleeping on their jobs. Others too needlessly annoy, with my bank being the most consistent offender. Those somnambulist bank clerks repeatedly order me to file Know Your Client, or KYC, information at random and without warning. They threaten to freeze my account—unless I have already provided the information, in which case I can safely ignore their threats! I am convinced that my bank is a Know-all Yet Clueless entity. I ask myself, “Should such a KYC entity, that is incapable of keeping track of even my KYC documents, be trusted with my hard-earned money?”
The telephone company, the insurance wallahs, the piped gas people—all blithely keep demanding money from me. They threaten me with unnamed horrors if I do not pay and then, anticlimactically, tell me to ignore the dire warnings if I have already paid. Clearly, they lack the ability to keep track of my payments and again I feel foolish because I have paid the bills when I could have gotten away without paying a penny. A good friend of mine suggested that I should exact revenge by sending a cheque, with a note telling them to encash the cheque only if the bill remains unpaid. He argued that this would force them to check their records. For some reason, this seemed quite imbecilic, even to an intellect as inferior as mine.
I am sure at some time in the future I won’t be able to remember what I ate for breakfast or even whether my fly is zipped up. In that condition, I will certainly not be able to recall whether I have paid the banks, the insurance companies, the telephone service providers and sundry others. Unfortunately, they have all amply demonstrated that even today they are not capable of remembering anything. Will the world then come to a grinding halt? And if not, what are all these threatening messages for?
Please ignore if this has been published earlier and you have already read it.
K.C. Verma is a former chief of R&AW. kcverma345@gmail.com