कपोल-कल्पित

One fine morning, as the leader entered his chamber and positioned his leadership on the chair, the rear left arm of the chair fractured and the leader found him-self on the floor. Unable to get up, he called the chief secretary, who then helped him back on his feet. The leader, laden with anger, gave the chief secretary a severe tongue-lashing and ordered him to file a report on this accident and keep the file confidential.                Social welfare minister was to visit the leader in the morning but the leader, superstitious as he was postponed the meeting and called in the trade minister instead, the social welfare can always wait, he confided to the chief secretary. The Trade minister was worried about inflation that was caused by the rising imports of essential commodities. The leader told him that there are other organs in the government to bother about inflation and that he should concern himself with t...

I had a dream last night. That all the money I had turned into valueless papers and nobody, not even police officers were accepting it. It is not my passion to delve into the interpretation of dreams but this particular dream got me thinking if dreams really mean something. One of my friend's literal interpretation was that something dear to me will turn meaningless. But this is a rather cynical reading of things. Adding more metaphors and tweaking the obvious cynicism can create more mystery and surpass the shallow traps of everyday thinking. Then there was the pragmatic reading of another friend who pointed out that something like demonetization did happen and it’s the post-traumatic stress that’s causing the dreams. His reasoning is that dreams are a more subtle representation of how events around us impact us subconsciously. Maybe it’s the blessed feeling of nostalgia for demonetized currency which has turned into the cursed feeling of abandonment that releases stress hormone...

  If the letter (word) is a kite, the spirit is the thread, no matter how much flight a kite assumes, its fall is destined by a soft cut on the thread. The current Pandemic defines such a soft cut to the spirit of the law. It appears all letters were always dependent on their spirits. Recently, Delhi high court directed the centre to ‘beg, borrow or steal’ oxygen supply to save the lives of citizens. Surely, the spirit supersedes the letter in a pandemic situation. The letter of cooperative federalism is conciliation and not compromise. The spirit of the same is co-operation and not competition. The letter as pointed out by the central government counters the Delhi govt. scheme of home delivery of rations. A section of a certain Act requires prior approval for any change in the method of distribution. There has to be a compromise between the competing forces of distribution, i.e, a traditional mechanism of public rationing against door-step delivery of the same. The 'Delhi Sark...