Gaddi Sabzi Tax

Gaddi Sabzi Tax

Today was chaos, our maid didn’t want to work, the cook wanted the evening off and on top of it we had the mother of all rains deluging the pind! It seemed as if with the change of the government and all what we were going through Mother Nature just decided to take control and replenish the water levels. I think the big lady upstairs just thought She had to take control and just step in, as the Punjabis were just not getting the plot on climate control.

So, apparently sugar is being sold cheaper at Mithapur. And, I just did not make up this name. There exists a true name and it’s the next village to us and with whatever Modiji was doing tomorrow, sugar was being sold cheaper. They all needed time off to go buy and stock, as the tax tomorrow would make everything expensive. Forget atta, dal, they needed cheeni to make life sweeter for them.

Bittu, had enough money he said to go buy sugar for the next couple of months and he said with the saving he would be able to afford the gas cylinder next month. He told me in such serious, clear terms that I had no heart to explain him what was actually happening. It wasn’t GST to him, it was gaddi, sabzi tax that was going to be implicated and was going to affect him and the poor, prices were going to go up and he just didn’t know what to do. Asha , my mata rani , phoolan devi rolled into one wanted to buy sugar because the nasha in the chai came with the cheeni ! And, I needed to make her happy .

On top of it the present government was going to take away the blue cards. It is sad, that a handful of politicians that use us against each other manipulating the basic needs of one that can all be taken care by generating employment, by creating a framework of education, technical skill that should have been set yesterday (or the last century).

They crippled us, and the current generation making us dependent on the sops and now the rug was being snatched.

GST, which is overdue since two decades shot down by the same government when Dr Manmohan Singh introduced it is being re packaged and being sold to sell an uniform tax but the phasing out is so confusing that the entire country is in panic mode.

There is pre GST sale, a post GST sale, Facebook is inundated with calculations, tax videos that I may like to watch; I think Zuckerberg is doing this after heavy revenues! The news channels, even the regional Punjabi ones to the local kirana shop and my favorite cloth merchant is telling me to buy clothes as everything is getting expensive.

I just know life is changing and things will take a time to settle down, but in the meanwhile we are hoarders of everything.

The best part of the entire tax-shaxx that this pind wali bibi understood and the only thing that leapt to me in the fine print is that coffee isn’t getting expensive.

Well, justice served finally.