Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhh! It’s been such a nutty week and poor Econ Mom is a complete, total, confused mess.
It all started a couple of weeks ago, when my car started making strange noises on applying the brakes. Now, a good ole Honda doesn’t ever create any which noise, forget strange noises, and I was spooked. I tried applying the brakes fiercely, gently, with a smile and with a professional pan-face. Nope.
The car wouldn’t be persuaded and was taken off for an overhaul. In the meanwhile, the Hubs sweetly offered me his car. I’d have liked it with the Hub-chauffeur, but no such luck. I got only the machine minus the man. And the main problem is that it is German.
We, of the Honda tribe, detest German engineering. Gott im Himmel! Hubby’s Polo doesn’t start till you apply some serious muscle tension to the key; and the reverse gear is the first gear plus tension. I tell you, I was unused to such tension in my regular driving life and it was freaking me out.
But, you don’t know the worst yet. The Polo indicator controls and the wiper controls are on the wrong side. The Germans may be marvellous at engineering, but the idiots don’t know their left from the right. OMG. This is magnificiently spooky. I was feeling like a right wing economist being forced into writing a poem “In Praise of Marx and Controls.”
The first day on the Polo and some weirdo who came from the opposite side of our super narrow street flashed his headlights at me. Now this, is a pure-ghee Indian driving phenomenon. The person flashing lights first apparently has the moral right of way, other things be damned. “Oh yeah, I’ll show you who goes first,” I thought viciously and flashed the light indicator viciously to be met by a most efficient German water jet on my windscreen, causing me to jump madly in my seat. “Hell,” I thought, automatically moving my left hand towards the wipers, in the process switching on some indicator lights. “Oh, this is really quite merry”, I thought with gritted teeth as cyclists and bikers behind me started to swear, not quite sure where I might eventually turn. By now, in addition to switching on all possible headlights and indicators, I had also started the wiper on the backscreen. My car does not have the feature and I was terrified. Germans, you back stabbers!
I had a real bad first week with the Polo. Even the radio wouldn’t play soothing songs and after listening to that idiotic woman pleading “DJ waale babu mera gaana bajaa do”, followed by Yo-Yo Honey Singh informing me conversationally in the middle of the downpour that “Din Hain apparently Sunny Sunny Sunny Sunny Sunny Sunny”, I was completely disheartened. I had had it.
Hubby was absolutely enjoying the whole process and had started taking unusual amount of interest in my daily “Aaj ki Polo khabar” ravings and rantings. After listening to my conspiracy theory on how the same radio stations were playing different songs for the Polo drivers, he couldn’t control his glee at all. “You could try writing “Who moved my indicator controls? We’ll get Subbarao to write the foreword for your book,” he suggested wickedly. “Oh, shut up. I’ll write Econ Mom and the Cursed Car instead,” I muttered darkly.
Sigh! As if I did not have enough on my plate, J K Rowling, of all the people, had decided to come out with a badly written book. Lil One and I had quite a merry little boxing bout the day it arrived home, which I won mostly by virtue of tickling him (“That’s cheating, Mom!”) and then packing him ceremoniously off to school. But I was so badly, badly disappointed. The max humor content the book has to offer is when Albus Potter tells Scorpio, “Yeah, you can’t be Voldemort’s son. You’ve got a nose!”
Oh, really. C’mon, is this Rowling? To read a Potter without the witticism and the detailed plots and well-developed character nuances was such a culture shock. It was exactly like putting a Honda driver into a German car.
And then, the GST Constitutional Amendment Bill was passed. Such a rude shock for us economists! I mean, how could they? The monsoon session had started properly enough, with Rahul Baba dozing off and the rest shouting madly. Now, technically, this fervour had to be followed up with paper balls, flinging of chairs, and well, maybe pepper spray for high drama. Chidambaram had to shout that the NDA does not know its economics, and Subramaniam Swamy had to follow it up by saying that nobody in the world knows economics. An apoplectic-with-moral-rage Arnab, falling markets and a witty Tweakonomics piece by Yours Sincerely would wrap it up nicely.
So there I was, waiting for the Amendment not to go through, when it went through! Unanimously! And that is BIG news. It’ll mean a lot of changes in the short run, but the longer run gains should make up for the trouble. A single-window for indirect taxation, lesser administration, more transparency, lesser subjectivity in assessments, lesser time in transit and hopefully, a fair sharing-between-states system. It is what every economist had dreamt of.
And yet, there I was, confused. How can the UPA behave so professionally? Now whom will we blame for the low-pace in reforms? When you have all politicians rooting for taking reforms ahead, rather than play their own silly partisan games, it creates a rude shock in the minds of innocent citizens like me. Exactly like putting a Honda driver into a German car.
Epilogue
After driving the Polo for about 10 days, I got my car back. Oh, the feeling! I could have run to it and honked in slow motion! God must have sensed the romance and sent a small drizzle my way.
I immediately sat in my car and then, to my horror, started reflexively moving my right hand to start the wipers. To my consternation, the indicator lights started ticking, while the wipers wouldn’t budge. The radio informed my frayed nerves that “Hafte mein chaar Shaniwar hone chahiye”. OMG. Now I’m a German driver in a Japanese car. Help!
manasiecon 