The headlines screamed that the dollar had breached the ninety-rupee mark!
Just a year ago it was around eighty-four rupees to a dollar. Six rupees in a few months. Then my eyes travelled to the next column where the Chief Economic Advisor calmly announced that he was not losing any sleep over the declining rupee.
Not losing sleep. How wonderful. If the man in charge was sleeping soundly, then surely, we should too. Except that my pillow suddenly felt very lumpy and uncomfortable. Maybe that was because six rupees in a few months is not what I call a lullaby.
I tried telling myself that experts know best. But then I remembered that these are the same experts who told us once that demonetisation would fix everything. That corruption would disappear. That the economy would shine like a polished brass tiffin box. Instead, small businesses collapsed and the economy behaved like my old scooter which used to run beautifully but stall exactly in the middle of traffic.
Yet even then we were told not to lose sleep. And we obeyed.
We are very obedient people. We lose sleep when the cricket team loses, but not when the price of onions climbs higher than a Bollywood star on an award stage.
We lose sleep when our neighbour parks one inch closer to our car, but not when the poverty index shows we are sliding downward like a child on an oily slide.
We lose sleep over potholes on our lane, but not over a state burning in the North East while the rest of the country pretends it is a barbecue.
And now we are asked to sleep peacefully while the rupee shrinks like a wool sweater in hot water. We are told to rest while unemployment figures do a high jump. We are told to dream of five trillion-dollar economies while ground reality looks more like a discount bargain counter.
I do not know what kind of mattress our leaders sleep on, but it must be softer than clouds and thicker than election promises.
Imagine sleeping so soundly while farmers take their lives, youths stand in line for jobs that do not exist, and parents wonder how to pay school fees. Imagine sleeping through hate speeches spreading faster than mosquitoes in monsoon. Imagine sleeping through accusations of corruption during elections. Imagine sleeping through the cries of Manipur, a state treated like the forgotten guest at a wedding feast.
Maybe our leaders have mastered the art of deep spiritual sleep? The sort of sleep where you lie down and switch off the problems of the nation like switching off a fan. The fan continues to spin for a while but eventually stops. Meanwhile the rest of us lie awake fanning ourselves with newspapers printed with promises.
Hey people, are you also asleep like this leader?
If you are, please wake up. Somebody needs to stay awake before the country sleepwalks off a cliff…!