Five Point Nothing

It is wonderful to be back at the Academy. I have had wonderful memories of this place and consider it to be the best among all the other Academies. As I checked into the room of the guest house allotted to me, the first thing that stuck me was the bedroom. Not that I have not seen these rooms before, but every time I did, I was confounded with the same thought – the shape of the room. The bedrooms of the guesthouse are pentagon in shape.  I have seen square and rectangular rooms. Or even ‘L’ shaped rooms, but pentagon? A room with five corners and five walls where every wall appears running diagonally when seen from the opposite wall. Due to the unusual angles of the wall, the furniture appears to be strewn around. The entire room has a feel of post modernist abstract sculpture. Thankfully, the bed is rectangular. Else I would have spent another lifetime figuring out where to rest my head. The old faithfuls of my blog will know how totally immersed I was into the training during my probation days. Therefore, I could not spare much thought to this mysterious design. However, this time, I decided to find out why was there the extra wall.

Probably they were inspired by the American Defense Headquarters. After all, Defence and Taxation are the two most defining signs of sovereignty.  But that seemed too far stretched. It was constructed at a time when our friendship with the Soviet Union was next only to that of Jai and Veeru. Or maybe it was driven by Vaastu considerations. No matter how secular and scientific we claim ourselves to be, it is a fact that we do allow ourselves such indulgences in an unabashed manner. So I sent a copy of the room plan to an eminent vaastu expert for his expert opinion. His marketing tagline screamed that his structures bought peace and prosperity in life and afterlife. I thought he plagiarised the ad campaign of the leading insurance behemoth. Later, I learnt that more than buildings, he designed tombstones, graveyards and even crematoriums. Of course, those alive cannot certify and those dead could not confirm. After numerous follow-ups, all I got for an opinion was a terse two-worded phrase that we hear every day on the news channels, “No Comments”.

Not the one to be disheartened, I decided to independently examine the possibility of some veiled astronomical significance in the design. I guess, it was a hangover of reading too much of Dan Brown.  I remember seeing such strange structures in Jantar Mantar too. I got the Sky Watchers Handbook from the library and stared through the window wondering if any particular planet, star or constellation would be visible from that angle. All I could see was the flickering sodium vapour street Iamp peeping through the branches of a wilted Gulmohar tree. I waited till the dawn to check where the first rays of sun fell. It fell on that corner of the room where the dustbin was placed.

At this point, I must confess that this was not only baffling room I came across. A stranger room was occupied by my erstwhile boss in Hyderabad. The building is probably one of the best governement offices in the country but rooms of the range heads are puzzling to say the least. They are so acutely trapezoidal that they almost border an isosceles triangle. The occupants have found planning the orientation of their office table more challenging than cracking hardcore money laundering. Such assymetry that whichever way you park you table, the opposite walls appear diagonally. The same room makes you feel claustrophobic at one end and agoraphobic at the other. Constant staring at diagonally running walls causes such severe disorientation that you just look into the files and never lift your head. May be that was the intent too. No one should aimless stare at walls. Not even for a second. Not even to look at the calendar or the clock.

I just keep wondering about the brains behind such fantastic designs which have a potential for a doctoral dissertation among the classes and political polarization among the masses. They can pass off as a new age architectural fusion of Pythagoras' Trigonometry with Picasso’s Cubism - an offspring of the holy union between art and science. Just that they fell short of utility and function failed to follow the form. They are no different from the first house allotted to me by the government. By now, I realised that even pondering over the subject was adversely affecting my abilities to judge distances and dimensions. I also began to fear that I am on the threshold of becoming an astigmatic. Since I needed to protect my limited cerebral and sensory abilities, I decided to call off this quest for truth with immediate effect. As I could not find any special reason behind these grotesque geometrics, I concluded, like many other assets of the state, they must be the result of sarkari planning and budgeting. Only in this case, in their zeal to cut corners, they cut a few too dramatically.

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The Gold Rush

If raids are the most dramatic part of the Income Tax department, then seizing gold is the most melodramatic part of the raid. You may take away crores of cash from a man with an ease of taking shirt off Salman Khan’s back. He would plead for sometime but would soon accept the fait accompli and starts plotting the next plan of action. But making a woman, and may be Bappi Lahiri, part with one milligram of gold is like asking selectors to rest Tendulkar. It would be a malady of misery and misfortune and a demonstration of dishonor and disgrace. A sorrow that finds place next only to grabbing the dress of your dreams in a melee of end-of-season sale but finding it one size larger. I never understood the fatal attraction of women towards jewellery. But then, I never understood women in the first place. In any case, it is not unusual for me to deal with things that I don’t understand. I have been doing it ever since I went to school and have been doing it more confidently ever since I joined the Government of India.

We are quite reasonable and we do allow a reasonable amount of jewellery to be retained. So when you ask them to choose some jewellery from those proposed for seizure for retaining, they face their biggest dilemmas of their existence. It is like asking them to choose between Clooney, Cruise and Cooper. Or like asking them choose between husbands who can cook, clean or take care of babies. Unconsciously, you have triggered off the most complex decision-making ever in history of mankind, or rather womankind. A decision-making process that must consider a billion variables, each of which are a polynomial function consisting of intangibles as variables and invisibles as coefficients. One which would take the best super computer few years to arrive at the solution. The estimation of the utility value of each piece of jewellery has to be calculated with respect to the clothes, shoes, bags, watches and 524 other accessories, some of which could be passed off as a piece of UFO cutlery. So that calls for a massive inventorying of not just what the lady owns but also what she plans to buy and what she dreams to buy in the next five years. The same exercise has to be repeated with her sisters, cousins and friends with whom she has a bilateral jewellery exchange agreement. No spreadsheet and not even pen and a paper. An exercise whose magnitude and complexity is comparable only with that of Wal-mart’s stock taking is accomplished just by looking at the jewellery and staring into thin air.

After three hours, the first piece of jewellery is yet to be decided. If it was cash, I would have seized, deposited in the bank and be on my way to some watering hole. I just hate the notion of working on a weekend. But since we spend most of our weekdays figuring out what to work upon, we end up working on weekends. And here was a lady who has completely disassociated herself from time. I realize that the proposed beer at the sports bar in the afternoon has to be rescheduled to evening. With a heavy heart and heavier hand, I SMS the same to my friends. 

You know the utility evaluation is over when the lady finally begins to touch the jewellery. But what you do not know is that the touch has triggered the second evaluation, the one that is exponentially  more complex, emotional evaluation. The moment she touches the jewellery, you can see her going into flashback. Sepia-tinted images float before her and violins play at the background. Every piece of jewellery, has a story behind it and some even have epics. And all of these relate to those jewellery gifted by her parents. That which are bought by her husband, however, would have to contend with just anecdotes. Anecdotes of his tightfistedness and how she had to settle for less when she could have got something better. Something not very different from the perception about her choice of husband.  So the output of previous decision-making is fed into a new flow chart evaluating the sentimental value of the jewellery.

Even as the process goes on, the lady still thinks that some miracle would happen and she would be spared of this ordeal of separation. At regular intervals, she would come up with new pleas. She would begin to narrate how poor they are. It doesn't matter that there is fleet of luxury cars in their porch and the house is situated in one of the most expensive localities of the town. If they are poor, I wonder what her servants are. Further, what about those who earn less than 30 rupees a day. Anyways, she soon realizes that we-are-poor-strategy is not convincing even to her, let alone us. So now begins the next argument – “Why us? There are so many people richer than us, so why us?” This time her husband, who till now was a silent spectator to the proceedings, too joins and you soon start hearing scores of names. They even start saying that the department goes after poor, hapless people like them and we lack the guts to go behind the high and mighty. I remind them that raids are conducted on suspected tax evaders, not on the basis of Forbes ranking. I offer them an opportunity to file a tax evasion petition before me and assure them of suitable action. And that seals their mouths. So much cooperation from our public minded elite who cry hoarse over corruption, black money and swiss accounts. 

The discussions on politics, power and wealth have metamorphosed into a futile inconclusive philosophical polemic. As the sun goes down, so does my patience. I declare that if they fail to complete their selection within the next 10 minutes, I am going to decide by means of a lucky, or rather, unlucky draw.  The threat works. All decision-making algorithms are suspended with immediate effect and choices are made based on the momentary instincts. Its late evening and I have my doubts about the dinner. However she doesn't have any more doubts on the impending fate of her jewellery. As the jewellery makes its way into the container which would be sealed and stashed away, the lady looks at it with the sigh of a mediaeval explorer having the final glimpse of his homeland at the horizon from the ship. The expression on her face is a concoction of hope, anxiety, fear and misery. Her husband, however, has just one expression - petrifaction at the imminent pestering for new jewellery the moment we leave the premise. It is now that his dilemma begins - whether to first pay taxes or buy jewellery. 

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You are the Assistant Commisioner of Income-tax when...

Every letter / notice / circular gets marked to you irrespective of its intended recipient. And you are expected to respond to it.

You unconsciously attain specialization in sending reports of whose purpose you have no idea and of whose contents you have no clue.

You get RTI applications asking for data pertaining to the last 20, 30 or even 50 years when the Income-tax act deprives you of any power to look into issues more than six years old.

Any file you open reminds you of the Harappan script you saw in your sixth grade history textbook.

You start nodding to everything your boss says irrespective of its practical viability and your personal capability.

You wish that you could outsource the task of hearing the Chartered Accountants / Advocates / Income-tax Practitioners to Sach ka Saamna.

You spend 90 % of your time searching for your staff while they spend 90% of their time searching for the file you asked for.

The remaining 10% of the time is spent counting the number of digits in figures of the Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss accounts.

All you see during examination of books of accounts is numbers scrolling down like the famed matrix screensaver.

You issue refunds worth lakhs of rupees, but your own reimbursement of official travel bill of Rs 340 never sees the light of the day.

You realize that if your salary is linked to the number of signatures you affix, you could breeze your way into the Forbes list within a year.

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Krishna Connection

Vijayawada. That is the place chosen for me to begin my career. Everyone would like to work in metros and big cities. That is where the action for IRS lies. Big cases, complicated issues and ingenious chartered accountants collude to sharpen the learning curve. But small towns have their own charm, I was told. If you dispute my terming of Vijayawada as a ‘small town’, all I can say in defense is that small is relative. The last time I referred to Vijayawada as small, the listener broke into a sarcastic laugh. An accomplished bureaucrat who retired as Chief Secretary, he must have felt that I was being snobbish. I can’t blame him much. Even my batchmate in the IAS, who is posted in Eluru, protested instantly at my judgment of urban sizes.

It is characteristic of my service that we don’t begin with places like Rampachodavaram. Atleast not till the Government thinks of taxing collection of honey and sale of wild jackfruits. And that, considering the reluctance to bring agriculture in the ambit of taxes, seems very remote. So for IRS, where a lot of our colleagues start their careers at places like Mumbai and Delhi, Vijayawada is a small place.

So what is it that makes small places charming? It is the people. The day I was to reach here, my train was scheduled to arrive here at 4:45 in the morning. I called the office the previous day and asked if they could send someone to the railway station as I was new to the place and was arriving at an odd hour. In about an hour’s time, I got a call from the driver. I asked him to be at the station by 4:30 in the morning. He said he would be at 4 am. And he was. It was just the beginning. It is ten days since I came here. And I have never come across anyone who thinks twice when you ask him for something. People here respect you to the point of embarrassment.

One reason could be because officers of my rank are few. There are five officers of the rank Assistant / Deputy Commissioners in Vijayawada. The corresponding number in Hyderabad is more than 50. Other could be historical. During my interaction with a senior officer, who hails from this place, I was told the behavior of people towards Government officials is result of the colonial history. Since the region, unlike Hyderabad, was under the colonial rule, the people are well-acquainted with administrative machinery and are more conscious of the power, potential and the reach of Government. This is something which would be put to test soon. How?

My jurisdiction consists mainly of old parts of the city and adjoining rural areas. The economic growth is not very vibrant in these parts. But that doesn’t grant me immunity from upward revision of revenue targets. My predecessor felt that collections have reached optimum levels and are likely to plateau. The only way to increase collection was to widen the tax net. So I have sent about 400 letters to assesses, who were not filing returns to do so. Non-filing of Income-tax returns when you have a taxable income or when you belong to particular class of assesses like companies could lead to imprisonment. The response to these letters would reveal whether the people here are truly respectful of the authority of Government.

Personally what I like the most about small cities is their contribution on the professional front. You get to deal with all types of cases. In big cities, there is an element of specialization in the jurisdiction. Some charges deal with only salary cases, some with business cases and others with companies. However, in small cities, the jurisdiction is territorial. So one gets to deal all kinds of cases and consequently the experience is more varied. Secondly, the workload is relatively more manageable. Not that every colleague of mine in the metros are getting buried under the piles of files, but a few of them do have quite a Herculean task ahead of them. And for me, after two years of slumber at Mussoorie and Nagpur, keeping myself awake when sun is still high is in itself a Herculean task.

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The One Year Itch

It is one year since I joined the National Academy of Direct taxes. I think it is time that I share what I have learnt in this one year. The major subjects were accountancy and Income Tax Act. Accountancy was truly unnerving to say the least. Though I come from an engineering background, I am not very comfortable with numbers with a trail of zeros. I don’t mind algebraic expressions. But pages with high density of numbers is not something I was familiar or comfortable with. Till date, the maximum numerical density I could tolerate was the soduku square. Here was a long list of numbers waiting to be divided into two categories, debit and credit. The challenge was not in segregation, but in ensuring that their totals were identical. And that’s where my woes began.

Actually, debit and credit are not entirely new to me. Debit is the name of the card which was given to me by the bank which has my salary account. It is a good card but doesn’t work after the 10^th day of the month. Credit is the card which my dad gave me. It works 365 days a year. To sum up, I had very pleasant memories of “debit’ and “credit”. But ever since I started my accountancy classes, I began to hate those words. At the end of the course, the only thing that I am confident of is that I can draw a line that would run exactly through the center of the page.

I don’t think my experience with the Income Tax act is very different. Even the best of the argumentative Indians will acknowledge without second thoughts that it is the most difficult and complicated pieces of legislation. But that is how tax legislations are. It is said that Prince Siddhartha left his kingdom the day his taxation classes began. Later, he attained enlightenment pondering over the first word uttered in the class, “Income”. Chandragupta Maurya, fearing that his son too might run away, divested himself of the finance portfolio and handed it over to Chanakya. Chanakya’s concern for posterity took the shape of Arthashasthra. But that is where the problems began to grow in geometric progression. Codification of laws gives rise to a new phenomenon called “interpretation”, whose limits coincide with that of ingenuity and insanity.

The Income Tax Act, 1961 must be having around 400 sections, 1200 sub-sections and god-knows-how-many provisos and explanations. But I know only two sections. Section A and Section B. Section B is where HK and CM sit. I too sit sleep there. HK sits next to me, wakes me up when the class is over and reminds me that it is time to go for lunch / tea / home. CM was her predecessor. But for these two, I am not really sure to which sections the rest of my batchmates belong to. I hardly see any of them. The road from the mess to my classroom is utterly deserted when I run every morning to the class with a toast in mouth and paper tissues in my hands. If I am lucky, I wouldn’t be caught by my Assistant Course Director at the entrance of building.

If I am luckier, then he would send me back and ask me to join the next session. I would then go back to the mess and have a complete breakfast. Since I would be the lone diner, the entire staff of the mess would be there to serve me. I would leisurely eat till I risk falling asleep on the dining table. I would then take a cup of tea and take a stroll across the lawns opposite to the mess and wonder for the zillionth time how beautiful early mornings are. Never mind the clock striking 10. ‘Early’ is relative.

Yes, I lose one half casual leave for missing the class. But how does that matter. I never needed any leaves. I don’t have anywhere to go or anything to do. During probation, marriage is the most common occasion for which officers apply for a leave. I don’t see myself getting married even in my next birth and don’t have sufficient foresight to look beyond that. I don’t even have a beautiful fiancé / girlfriend whom I would love to meet. Considering that it took two and a half decades to get rid of me, I am the last person whom my parents would love see at their door. No wonder, in my one year stay in the academy, I just took one day leave. That was just last week. It was to attend a wedding of my batchmate at Punjab. At the risk of repetition and boredom, I would like to confess that I had no luck with lasses at the wedding.

On my way back, at Delhi, I managed to detain MS for a coffee. I love meeting MS because she is the only human being who often tells me that I am smart, intelligent and funny. I know it is her education that makes her say so. She was a practicing psychiatrist who is now pursuing M. Phil at IHBAS. It was more than a year I met her and I shared my achievements (or rather the lack of it) with her. This time even her professional experience couldn’t prevent her from getting shocked at how disastrous a person could be. When she recovered, she managed to blurt out, “I am scared what is going to happen when you go to office next April.”

I calmly replied, “So is the Government of India”

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Honest Taxpayers

“I have some more cases for you”, my surrogate trainer (ST) announced.

It was around 10 days since my “On Job Training” (OJT) began. He handed me a case bang on the day I reported to him. It was a case where the investigations were in progress. He asked me to study it, find Grey areas and prepare a questionnaire. That he served my questionnaire on the assessee[1] without much change was a tacit acknowledgment that I did a decent job. Or atleast I concluded it that way. Self-confidence building measures, you see. The assessee asked for time to file his reply. It was at this juncture that my ST announced that he had more cases in store for me.

I was happy because going through these files was certainly more interesting than observing office procedures like maintenance of records, handling mails etc. And, occasionally, you also get some page 3 pleasures when you see where and how the rich and famous have their wealth made or stored. I looked forward to the next case as it was an opportunity to prove that my previous efforts were not a fluke and I did have some soft mass beneath my hard skull. Not that my ST doubted; He was fine trainer who seemed to believe positively in the potentials of young officers. It is just that I did not want to prove him wrong like I did to most of my teachers who taught me previously.

Files of three cases were brought and placed on the large table of my ST. I picked up the case with the bulkiest of files. It is said that the best way to overcome the fear of something is to face it. And that was precisely what I was trying to do. Get over the fear of files, more importantly, the real fat ones. I took them back to my desk. STs are usually range heads, whose functions are mainly supervisory. He would have around five assessing officers under him who would scrutinse the Income Tax returns filed in the range. The range head does not do the scrutinies. However, in recent years, the range heads have been asked to scrutinise the top 20 cases in their jurisdiction. The case given to me was one such case. I found that my ST had begun investigations and had called for a lot of information from the assessee. He virtually called for proofs of every source of income and every source of expenditure. That explained why those files were so bulky. The assessee too seemed to be a meticulous person. He filed every detail that was called for; That too in a very neat and organised manner. I was impressed.

For the next three days, I perused through the documents. As with most cases, it took sometime to grasp the orientation of the case. True, I had a briefing about the activities of the assessee. But trying to deduce the line of investigation from the documents produced does take some time. Especially, when it is just the second case you are seeing. After three days of perusal, I was utterly frustrated. I could just come up with one issue. In the last case, where the file had just around one-third of documents in the present case, I came up with seven issues. When I brought to my ST's notice, the sole anomaly detected by me, he casually replied that it was already brought to the notice of the assessee, who conceded it. Wow. So that is a clean zero. The following day such was my desperation that I even began to verify the conveyance bills. I called up my friend who lived in Bangalore for four years and asked him the distance between various places in Bangalore and the corresponding taxi charges. This yielded just what my previous efforts in this case yielded. Nothing.

Finally, I gave up. The following morning, when my ST asked the progress in the case, I confessed that I could not detect anything. He seemed to be least perturbed. He made me understand something, remembering which, would hold me good stead in days to come. It not necessary that I always succeed. There would be honest taxpayers and in such cases any amount of scrutiny would not yield anything. Wisdom lies in accepting this fact. There is no point in passing orders making additions to taxable income merely because I have spent days investigating a case and I cannot accept the result to be nothing. It is not a question whether such orders would stand the test of the appellate authorities. They are sure to be knocked down. But in the process, it creates undue hardship to the taxpayer and avoidable workload to my colleagues. Instead, accept the income offered to tax and close the case.

After that day, I went through many files. And not a single one was flawless. But yes, that one file taught me that honest taxpayers are not a realm of fiction. They exist. I may not come across them very frequently. But I should accept one when I come across.

[1] The process of scrutiny of Income Tax returns is termed as assessment. The person being assessed in a case is the assessee.

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The Making of a Taxman

(This post is dedicated to my Cultural Secretary, who silently works hard and comes up with innovative proposals. Be it purchase of new musical instruments or creating a collection of different genres of music from all parts of the country or celebration of every festival from Lohri to Pongal to Holi or an extended game of Dumb Charades, he is always working to ease out the stress of tax laws. Commissioner Baghalpur Saab (as we fondly call him), you rock!!! )

I must apologise for the long hiatus in posting. It is only a fortnight since I got my computer in my room. I still don’t have internet. And it is difficult to blog amidst the din of our computer lounge. To those who are wondering what happened all these days, I present a brief summary of what happened in this long gap.

It is close to four months since I arrived at National Academy of Direct Taxes. To chronicle my stay in one post is virtually impossible. But idiots like me can achieve even the impossible with an unbelievable ease. At least my stupidity helps me to believe so. Before, I proceed let me inform you that I have a slight problem in judging time and space. At times, this is aggravated due to short term memory loss. So if you find that I have mixed up tenses, places, persons, genders, reality and fantasies, please forgive me.

We landed on 9th December. Contrary to our expectations, December was pretty warm. Probably, it was the warmth of our preceding batch, the faculty and our then Director General, who always had a special love for probationers. As days passed, the warmth increased. But this was from a different source – Tea. Now don’t dismiss this with a condescending sigh. It was at NADT that I discovered that there exists a ritual called High Tea. For someone who seldom drank tea, high tea was something very alien. But, soon we learnt that high teas were a common thing in the government and one must learn to enjoy it.

We had so many High Teas during December that the IPCC almost issued a missive accusing us of disproportionately contributing to global warming. An undisclosed highly placed report from the Economic Intelligence wing reportedly observed that if FBT was imposed on High Teas, then the fund collected could single-handedly meet the budget requirements of NREGA, SSA and NACO. However, considering that it would place a huge burden on most of the Government departments, the observation was silently pushed under the carpet.

On a serious note, high teas actually serve as an excellent platform to impart soft skills. For example, how to eat crispy golden fried Jalebis with a fork while holding the tea cup in a saucer in one hand and the plate containing the jalebis in another. Or how to eat with poise even when you might have actually been starving for three days and the snack is your favourite one.

But soon the incidences of High Tea reduced and we got restless. So we decided to elect a Cultural Secretary a.k.a CulSec and a Film Secretary a.k.a FilSec to make our evenings more eventful. The new CulSec took his role too seriously and celebration of various festivals became a serious affair in the academy. He is forever worried about what to celebrate. Such is his enthusiasm that when the calendar did not have any events for two consecutive weeks, he decided to celebrate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. He insisted that we have a really really sad song and a dance in slow motion. Luckily, just in time I informed him that you can just commemorate it, but not celebrate. He dropped the idea but not before finding a new reason to celebrate.

On February 6th, he wanted to celebrate the National Day of Niue. Officer Trainees (OTs) who had geography as their optional in Civil Service Examination, especially those who got the interview call again, are still trying to find where this country is. Nevertheless, the CulSec went ahead and planned a full-length programme with a folk dance from Tamil Nadu, a bhangra from Punjab, two songs (one instrumental and one vocal), and one dance. We, again, got into a fire fighting mode. We had to create an alternate event. Since the auditorium had excess capacity and no one in Nagpur was willing to come we decided to call our batchmates from Customs and Central Excise. They smelled something fishy and sent their senior batch. And this was what we were waiting for. The moment they landed in Nagpur they were led into the guest rooms and for the next one week we taught them the Income-tax Act. Why should only we have the pleasure of learning the act? Of course, we did keep our promise and treated them to the promised cultural evening on their last day of their stay.

While you are reading this post, the CulSec would get ready to celebrate Africa Malaria Day. It promised to be a grand event as sponsorships have already been obtained from all leading mosquito repellent products. When he is not organising festivals or lobbying for sanctioning of new proposals, he would be found writing his autobiography “Count Your Hair Before They G(r)o(w)”. And he is not the only budding writer here. At least a dozen books are on the offing from our batch. Some of the interesting ones are: How to Tax the Dead – A key to widen the tax base, 10001 Successful Reasons for Casual Leave, Seven Habits of Highly Unsuccessful KTPs[Refer footnote 1], Outsourcing Assignments and Income Tax for Dummies. All copies of the last book are sold out even before the first print.

I am not so intellectually endowed to write a book. So I prefer to read. I love autobiographies and Richard Branson’s is my all-time favourite. I have been reading it for over a decade. No luck, yet. Well, I am a slow learner.

When we are not reading or writing books, we watch movies. Our FilSec is no-nonsense guy who believes that movies must go beyond their targeted purpose of entertainment. At least he makes an attempt. What is great about watching meaningful movies? The challenge lies in watching meaningless movies and then trying to figure out what the movie was about. Towards this end, we had screenings of bollywood avant garde movies, like Mumbai Salsa. It was a cinematic expression of modern art. No one understands what it is, but everyone has a radically different story to tell, though they see the same visuals. Getting back to the movie, it had two far-reaching consequences, one unintended and one intended. First was that two Officer Trainees (OTs) qualified for an exchange program with the hospital [Refer footnote 2] across the road. Second was that the Hobbies Secretary started salsa classes. It was only later we came to know that salsa wasn’t as easy as it appeared. I had to abruptly drop out as doctor advised me not to lift weights more than 100 kgs.
My description of life here would be incomplete if I fail to mention the most exciting and adventurous activity which a few brave OTs undertake, marriage. Every weekend someone sets off to try his luck with the opposite gender. Activities range from visiting a prospective spouse, negotiating terms for a peaceful and non-violent marital life, actually getting married (which again could range from civil, ceremonial, secular, religious etc), pestering for family quarters in the campus etc. Those who do not have an opportunity to indulge in any of these luxuries spend their time watching movies like “Runaway Bride”, “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “Four Wedding and (my?) Funeral”.

If you are wondering about the conspicuous absence of academic activities in this post, it is because I really don’t get what is happening in the class. My understanding of English is a little poor. So when the Basic Hindi classes [Refer footnote 3] are conducted, I go to my Basic English classes. I am the only student there. I have learnt the spellings of articles, pronouns and propositions. I am beginning to learn the spellings of a few nouns like “Income”, “Tax”, “House”, “Property”, “Business”, “Profession”, “Salary” etc. Once I complete my English classes, my regular classes will commence. Till then I have been advised to sleep (but not snore) in the class. I sign off with the promise in the next edition you will find my experiences in the class.

1. KTP – Keen Type Probationers, those whose excuse for existence is to study, study and just study.
2. Opposite our campus, there is mental hospital.
3. It is part of the Official Language Policy.

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