The Bank Strikes Again

No, this is not a  Star Wars sequel. It is only that the guy who counts your cash (after licking his fingers, usually) at a window near you, will no longer do so. Today and tomorrow, there will be no such delights available. Senior citizens who like to go to the bank to chat with the cashier (because all the customers now go to the ATM) will be lonely, and may go into a depression.

The other major community that will face the brunt is the dons who use these channels to transfer their considerable earnings across landmasses (read countries, or states) so as to benefit the rest of humanity. But don't expect this segment to sit and twiddle their thumbs. They have already alerted the hawala operators to do extra duty during this period. This hawala business, incidentally, seems unique to India, and could be patented, if so.

But strikes in general, as I have earlier commented elsewhere, are good for the nation's health-and yours. They also reduce pollution, increase the income of multiplexes (Ek Tha Tiger may make a few more crores). I would recommend that all European banks learn from ours and go on strike, to kickstart their economies. After all, what's the fun in working if you are only staring down the barrel of an impending crisis? At least boost the tourism industry, take a holiday!

Mannina Maga

Mr. Mani who is a Mannina maga at Namma Bengaluru, was taking a walk. He was pondering. He had just returned from a trip to Devanahalli, where a six-lane highway had recently been completed after a few years of hard work. Now, to his dismay, he saw that the road was again dug up, for some major overlay on the same highway. He wondered what it was about. So he asked the Bangalore Municipal Commissioner what was going on. The Commissioner's office told him there was no such thing on that road, that he was imagining things.

After a while, his thoughts went in another direction. He was now starting to think what would happen to brand Bangalore, after the IT industry. His friend Sambamurthy (Samba for short) had recently expressed concern about the IT industry entering a rough patch. But Mani had managed to dispel, at least temporarily, Samba's concern with some encouraging words. He told Samba,

"Don't worry, if the Gulf runs out of oil, they may be in a soup. But we can at least turn to agriculture, no?" The intended-to-be-soothing words had been of little comfort to his friend, though, who morosely replied,

"But you have to do a lot of hard labor in agriculture, no?"

"So what? Even to sell insurance and credit cards and Aqua Guard, you do hard labor. Aren't many people doing that?"

"By the way," Samba asked Mani, "What are the Air India pilots striking work for? And how do they survive without a salary during the strike?"

Mani replied "I don't know what they are striking for, but they survive because they are overpaid to start with, this is like a holiday for them."

Samba also wanted to know from Mani, what he thought of major issues such as Global Warming, and got an unexpected reply from him. "Waat global warming, I say? Namma Metro is AC, and Volvo buses are AC. Just travel in A.C.-no warming." !!