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Ishani returned from school yesterday in Cloud Nine with a 'wild surmise' in her eyes. She was carrying in her hands a gorgeous A4 size document she couldn't read, printed in color on photo-quality paper. It had her school's name, logo, her name, a couple of hand-written flowers and stars and the remark: 'Excellent' penned in by her teacher and signed off with a flourish. Apparently it is her first hard-won Certificate (her Birth Certificate was won by others). She had been for the past week or so practicing 'Ba Ba Black Sheep' at home. And the Certificate was for her Recitation at school. And I was as pleased and tickled as only a non-playing granpa could be.
But I was sorry too. She started going to her nursery classes just a month and half back, of which a month was spent in what KGPians call 'Orientation' (of the nice kind). And already she is into what I called the Great Indian Rat Race:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/10/great-indian-rat-race-girr.html
My apprehensions proved right...today Ishani's mom told me that another mom of nodding acquaintance held her up and asked:
"How many stars did Ishani get?"
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My mom once told me that when her co-daughter-in-law (my Shakespeare Uncle's wife) died in 1940 a HUNDRED people attended her last journey because her husband (my Uncle) was at the pinnacle of his glory as a teacher. But when he himself died in 1970, hardly half a dozen people were present, because he had retired 15 years ago and was quietly forgotten...he lost the Great Indian Last Race badly to his wife...sigh!
Our family Purohit under whose auspices I performed all the thirteen days' obsequies of my Father (under my mom's strict supervision) told me pensively a year before he died:
"I must have helped a HUNDRED souls to reach Heaven...but my son is an ass, and I am sure he won't spend the time and money to see me off properly"
I consoled him:
"Surely you will reach Heaven a HUNDRED times, don't worry!"
I myself wrote a Will attested by two eminent witnesses stating that I will certainly reach Heaven a THOUSAND times (that is roughly the number of recos I doled out) and so my son should dispense with all mumbo-jumbo which would only try to pull me back...and the Rs 1,00,000 or more he saves thereby should be enjoyed by him and his family.
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India is the land of tigers, peacocks, snakes, camels, ivory, pearls, temples and Certificates.
The list of Certificates is unending...by a rough count I guess everyone of my generation had to get a hundred Certificates signed by Gazetted Officers or their equivalents during their lifetime. I still have to submit my Life Certificate every November. And now that I have 'property' (House on the Hill Top) jointly with my son, my son has to get several NOC's (No-Objection Certificates) for getting things like Electricity Bill transferred in his name which is required as his Residence Proof which is required for his opening a new Savings Bank Account which is required for the renewal of his Passport which calls for a Police Verification Certificate which requires him to find out which Police Station his new residence comes under, which requires inquiries in several Police Stations each of who pretend ignorance unless they are in a good mood to help which requires...you know...
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Of all the Certificates we had to get in the 1960s, the queerest was a thing called Migration Certificate. Don't think it had anything to do with getting a Green Card or Migratory Birds. It had to be collected from our University and submitted whenever we wanted to join a college under a different University. I guess it is now abandoned, much to the regret of clerks. Because, at the last count, the conservative state of AP itself has more than 50 Universities, many of them in Greater Hyderabad itself, and some are deemed if not doomed and damned.
The next weird Certificate is the Obsolescence Certificate. Let me give an example. I became uppish when I got a CSIR Research Scholarship stipend of Rs 250 pm in 1963 at Vizagh and bought a second hand radio set @ Rs 100. And took it with me to KGP in 1965. And was trying to listen to Radio Ceylon which was out of reach. So I had to make do with its nascent clone called Vividh Bharati by AIR. Although I had an indoor antenna, friends warned me that I better go to the KGP GPO and get a License Book issued by paying the hefty annual fees of Rs 10 before sleuths of the WB P&T catch me. Which I did after three attempts. And they said I had to get it renewed every year to escape heavy penalties. Which I did for a couple of years. And then my set croaked and the Repairwala said no point spending good money on a dead set...you get a better set with that money. Which I thought of doing. Then I was told that I had to get a separate license book for the new set (which had the maker's id number perhaps). That meant paying licenses for the dead set and the new one. And if I had to escape penalties, I had to visit the GPO and fill up a form saying my set is dead and give my Qrs No. And then their Technical Officer would make a sly visit to my Qrs and issue a Condemned Set Certificate if he is in a good mood.
I abandoned the whole idea and kept quiet. But by then the pocket transistor revolution caught on and the AIR abandoned its License Fees. But the mother of AIR in the UK by name BBC still survives on its License Fees:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/whoweare/licencefee/
You may ask why her Daughter, AIR, which is no less grasping, said 'hands up' and let go.
The answer is contained in the "gps Law of Large Numbers":
"When the expenditure incurred in collecting exceeds ten times the revenue collected, it is time to stop and look for other more profitable avenues of revenue"
...Like Birth and Death Certificates which were unknown in my Father's time.
=======================================================================
Ishani returned from school yesterday in Cloud Nine with a 'wild surmise' in her eyes. She was carrying in her hands a gorgeous A4 size document she couldn't read, printed in color on photo-quality paper. It had her school's name, logo, her name, a couple of hand-written flowers and stars and the remark: 'Excellent' penned in by her teacher and signed off with a flourish. Apparently it is her first hard-won Certificate (her Birth Certificate was won by others). She had been for the past week or so practicing 'Ba Ba Black Sheep' at home. And the Certificate was for her Recitation at school. And I was as pleased and tickled as only a non-playing granpa could be.
But I was sorry too. She started going to her nursery classes just a month and half back, of which a month was spent in what KGPians call 'Orientation' (of the nice kind). And already she is into what I called the Great Indian Rat Race:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/10/great-indian-rat-race-girr.html
My apprehensions proved right...today Ishani's mom told me that another mom of nodding acquaintance held her up and asked:
"How many stars did Ishani get?"
**********************************************************************************************************
My mom once told me that when her co-daughter-in-law (my Shakespeare Uncle's wife) died in 1940 a HUNDRED people attended her last journey because her husband (my Uncle) was at the pinnacle of his glory as a teacher. But when he himself died in 1970, hardly half a dozen people were present, because he had retired 15 years ago and was quietly forgotten...he lost the Great Indian Last Race badly to his wife...sigh!
Our family Purohit under whose auspices I performed all the thirteen days' obsequies of my Father (under my mom's strict supervision) told me pensively a year before he died:
"I must have helped a HUNDRED souls to reach Heaven...but my son is an ass, and I am sure he won't spend the time and money to see me off properly"
I consoled him:
"Surely you will reach Heaven a HUNDRED times, don't worry!"
I myself wrote a Will attested by two eminent witnesses stating that I will certainly reach Heaven a THOUSAND times (that is roughly the number of recos I doled out) and so my son should dispense with all mumbo-jumbo which would only try to pull me back...and the Rs 1,00,000 or more he saves thereby should be enjoyed by him and his family.
**********************************************************************************************************
India is the land of tigers, peacocks, snakes, camels, ivory, pearls, temples and Certificates.
The list of Certificates is unending...by a rough count I guess everyone of my generation had to get a hundred Certificates signed by Gazetted Officers or their equivalents during their lifetime. I still have to submit my Life Certificate every November. And now that I have 'property' (House on the Hill Top) jointly with my son, my son has to get several NOC's (No-Objection Certificates) for getting things like Electricity Bill transferred in his name which is required as his Residence Proof which is required for his opening a new Savings Bank Account which is required for the renewal of his Passport which calls for a Police Verification Certificate which requires him to find out which Police Station his new residence comes under, which requires inquiries in several Police Stations each of who pretend ignorance unless they are in a good mood to help which requires...you know...
********************************************************************************************************
Of all the Certificates we had to get in the 1960s, the queerest was a thing called Migration Certificate. Don't think it had anything to do with getting a Green Card or Migratory Birds. It had to be collected from our University and submitted whenever we wanted to join a college under a different University. I guess it is now abandoned, much to the regret of clerks. Because, at the last count, the conservative state of AP itself has more than 50 Universities, many of them in Greater Hyderabad itself, and some are deemed if not doomed and damned.
The next weird Certificate is the Obsolescence Certificate. Let me give an example. I became uppish when I got a CSIR Research Scholarship stipend of Rs 250 pm in 1963 at Vizagh and bought a second hand radio set @ Rs 100. And took it with me to KGP in 1965. And was trying to listen to Radio Ceylon which was out of reach. So I had to make do with its nascent clone called Vividh Bharati by AIR. Although I had an indoor antenna, friends warned me that I better go to the KGP GPO and get a License Book issued by paying the hefty annual fees of Rs 10 before sleuths of the WB P&T catch me. Which I did after three attempts. And they said I had to get it renewed every year to escape heavy penalties. Which I did for a couple of years. And then my set croaked and the Repairwala said no point spending good money on a dead set...you get a better set with that money. Which I thought of doing. Then I was told that I had to get a separate license book for the new set (which had the maker's id number perhaps). That meant paying licenses for the dead set and the new one. And if I had to escape penalties, I had to visit the GPO and fill up a form saying my set is dead and give my Qrs No. And then their Technical Officer would make a sly visit to my Qrs and issue a Condemned Set Certificate if he is in a good mood.
I abandoned the whole idea and kept quiet. But by then the pocket transistor revolution caught on and the AIR abandoned its License Fees. But the mother of AIR in the UK by name BBC still survives on its License Fees:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/whoweare/licencefee/
You may ask why her Daughter, AIR, which is no less grasping, said 'hands up' and let go.
The answer is contained in the "gps Law of Large Numbers":
"When the expenditure incurred in collecting exceeds ten times the revenue collected, it is time to stop and look for other more profitable avenues of revenue"
...Like Birth and Death Certificates which were unknown in my Father's time.
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