Column

The Hit Man answered the phone. “I want you to bump off my wife,” said the caller. “She is high maintenance in these inflationary times!”

The Hit Man agreed without much fuss and asked for his price. “I’ll do it for two kilos tomatoes,” he demanded, “two kilos brinjals, one kilo potatoes and half kilo onions!”

The caller protested. “That’s too much,” he said. “Can’t we settle for two dozen bananas and one mango instead?” The Hit Man slammed the phone and slipped into a flashback…

“This country has conned me,” he told himself and recalled how he was living happily as a non-resident Indian, coping with racism in the West and surviving death threats in strife-torn Africa.

Until he got blinded by India Shining slogans and decided to return to his homeland. But the moment he returned, the Hit Man found himself faced with an identity crisis. In other words, he had to be specific about whether he was a North Indian or a South Indian. But then he realised his geographical positioning as an Indian wasn’t enough; his caste would decide his future prospects in Mera Bharat Mahaan!

Life was far simpler abroad where he was just an Indian. But his prospect of finding a job diminished once his identity became clear as reservations and political bullying in the name of caste, community and geography made him ineligible to apply.

So what would any self-respecting Indian do under such circumstances? He opted for self employment and hoped to make a decent living. With crime rate soaring as the police coped with mob justice and courts swamped with frivolous PILs, there was no dearth of clients in the Hit Man’s chosen line of business. But there was a problem.

While the money was good, taxation was killing! And he wasn’t particularly amused by the 11.33 per cent tax deduction at source on his supari! That’s when he decided to stop charging his remuneration in money...

Cut to the present. The Hit Man boarded an afternoon flight to execute his latest target. And then everything went wrong. The Hit Man flipped when the steward served him lunch. “This is no lunch,” he hollered. “This is glorified snack!”

The steward blamed it on inflation. “You’re a glorified waiter,” snapped the Hit Man, who rushed to the cockpit and confronted the pilot. “And you’re a glorified…”

The pilot opened the emergency exit and offloaded one passenger in mid-air.