courtesy: Google Image
At present we Indians
are living in an in-between state,
neither true nor false.
‘Earn with integrity
Give back to society’
is the new mantra
of our government
these days. They believe,
they are working towards that goal.
So overnight 1000 and 500 rupee notes
were stripped of their status as legal tender.
We are given about two months time
to exchange them for fresh notes.
Apparently it’s all good.
Terrorists are pulling their hair
over their counterfeit money.
Desi* billionaires’ (our invisible potential foes)
spirits nosedived;
demonetization is demonization to them,
while our poor spirits sky rocketed;
‘an excellent move, now see how it feels to lose’,
we smirk at the shamelessly rich,
at the trigger happy terrorists,
at people sitting on piles of cash
amassed through bribery,
feeling betrayed by the govt.
We stand in long queues in banks
outside ATMs, perspire and even die
to have only 2500 rupee notes in cash
yet we praise the move
as in the new year
we are ringing out bribery, terrorism,
smuggling, ‘Black Money’ (local term for cash
stashed away to evade tax)
and ringing in honesty, integrity etc.
I hear from various news sources:
more than 23 billion junked bank notes
are stacked one on top of the other;
the pile would be 300 times
the height of Mount Everest.
I shudder to think of the aftermath,
as the cost to replace the old notes could be
as high as 200 billion rupees.
Have we truly become the denizens
of a bizarre Hyperbole-land, I wonder.
*‘Desi’ is ‘Local’
Posted for my Midweek Motif ~ Hyperbole (Stretch the Truth) @ Poets United
Note: This is just a sketch of what we’re going through. I dare say it’s a poem at all.
sumanar/lekha 
Timely Sumana, everything sounds shrill these days, no matter which side of the divide, the noise emanates from. Only suffering is silent. As only it can be.
love the demonization / demonetization line a lot, as well as the in-between states. Ah, the government sometimes pull crazy stuff even beyond our imagination.
You have described this dreadful situation very well. I understand the feeling of being betrayed by the government in this situation. It seems unfair to the ordinary people, who can only shake their heads, wait in line, and hope the situation can be resolved in a way that the commoner does not lose out!
No exaggeration on the effects it can have, Hard to imagine for those who have tried to save a little here and a little there.
What is money really worth in the end? Not much, since none of us can take it with us!
This is so powerful and yes I can only imagine what everyone must be going through!
What an ingenious way to trump (forgive me) the money launderers, if it works. I’d like to see a pile that high of even fake money. But will the people with regular pay and savings be able to recover? Neat poem that cuts in all directions.
Wow, this is interesting and astonishing to read. A massive change-over, given the populations. I like the rich tearing their hair out, the counterfeiters stymied…………I can’t imagine the magnitude of this. Very interesting, Sumana.
On our news it implied there was insufficient new money printed to exchange for the old which exacerbates the problem for those with little as few others would accept the old notes now. Clearly this is good idea that is being poorly enacted.
Timely post, Sumana! I don’t know if its good or bad for the country! But, for a citizen like me…its truly troublesome!
It seems that even when the government tries to stop corruption, catch the crooks and make all the black money worthless, it’s the ordinary, honest people that suffer the most, Sumana. And I wonder, the truly big crooks, the very corrupt and filthy rich, do they have Indian currency or do they have offshore bank accounts and bars of gold?