It happened at a cricket match, the umpire, an elderly gentleman with all the authority of a man who had probably declared many batsmen out unfairly in his life, stood ready for the toss and asked in a serious voice, “Anybody having a one rupee coin?”
There was silence. Real silence. The sort that usually comes when someone asks in a drawing room who will pay the bill.
Then one young player asked, “A what?”
Another said, “I’ve heard of a ten-rupee coin!”
A third looked astonished and asked, “You mean they had one-rupee coins?”
I laughed, but only for a moment, because after the laughter came a rather uncomfortable thought. Here was a generation looking at a rupee coin as if it belonged in an archaeological museum.
There was a time when a rupee had status. A rupee could buy peanuts wrapped in newspaper, a bus ticket, a cutting chai, marbles, toffees and sometimes, with a little persuasion, even a comic.
A rupee was not loose change; it was change with purpose.
Today the poor coin looks unemployed. It rattles sadly in drawers. It rolls beneath sofas. Even if found, people look at it with pity. Soon museums may display one with a label saying, “Ancient Indian Currency. Once used to purchase actual goods.”
Visitors will take selfies beside it.
And how did this happen? How did we reach a point where a generation does not know what a rupee can do, mainly because a rupee can do nothing?
Somewhere while money was put into bank accounts in exchange for votes, transferred to those who would join the party, money itself began losing value.
Inflation has not marched in with drums. It has tiptoed in and occupied the house.
Prices rise like opening batsmen on a flat wicket, while we sit discussing every possible manufactured fear except the shrinking worth of what sits in our wallets.
Meanwhile, we are fed daily diets of anger: Love jihad one day, anti-conversion the next, manufactured outrage served hot.
It is excellent political theatre.
While we argue, groceries rise. Fuel rises. Living rises. Only salaries seem to practise humility. Meanwhile the rupee shrinks into irrelevance. Even the ten-rupee coin may soon need emotional support. I sometimes imagine the one-rupee coin whispering to the ten, “Brother, your turn is coming.” And the ten replying nervously, “Maybe the people will wake up!”
What fascinates me is how cleverly rhetoric can distract from economics.
A jibe, like calling someone, ‘papu’ gets applause. A national speech of lies is replayed.
But friends the joke, slowly and cruelly, is on you: Because when citizens stop noticing the falling value of money and become obsessed only with being emotionally manipulated, they are not merely distracted, they are being fooled.
And one day, when some future umpire asks for a ten-rupee coin and a youngster says, “What is that?” perhaps we will realise that while we were cheering from the stands, a clever political party walked off with the match…!