Demonetisation: Dear Rs 100 note, please accept our apologies for taking you for granted

Dear honoured, esteemed, revered hundred rupee note sirji,

I have to say I am ashamed of the way we have treated you in the recent past. The way we have badmouthed you and sat around discussing how you were incapable of getting us anything worthwhile.

Tossed you into a dark and dingy corner of our minds with none to do you reverence. Ha! A hundred rupee note, what a cruel joke, how far does it go, not even worth peanuts.

We scoffed you for sure and you waited your turn. I always had a sneaky feeling you would make a comeback from the glorious days of the seventies and eighties and we could see a movie in ‘dress circle’ for Rs 4.40 and buy coffee at the Taj for Rs 10 and a whole family could live off you for a week in comparative luxury. A tin of pure ghee was Rs 6 and four of us could have Chinese dinner for one of you with tip included.

We joined the Times as journalists in 1969 on five of you a month and we lived damn well and three of you could fly us from Mumbai to Delhi. And a bottle of rum cost Rs 8. Ho! ho! ho!

I am not pumping sunshine (of course I am), but I always felt that after you had faded into oblivion and counted for nothing but chump change that you would make a comeback and what a comeback it has been.

Not even in your heydays have you been so coveted and so much in demand today what with everyone chasing you and wanting you to fetch up in their lives.

It must be a wonderful feeling and I am so happy for you.

Just to have you in our pockets is such a warm, fuzzy sensation.

Please do not see this as sucking up to you (which it blatantly is but I cannot admit it) but I have always been one of your well-wishers and I still give my sister only Rs 100 on Rakhi (in your honour, not because I am downright stingy) and you are always welcome to bring all your siblings and stay with us. Come in your thousands and we will find room for you.

In fact, so moved am I by your resurrection that I wish to publicly extend to you my humble apologies for the past misconduct and for treating you badly. It was entirely shortsighted and all I can say is may there be more and more of you — ‘phoolo jeeyo’ with abandon.

India needs you (I need you) and woe to those who were nasty about you and disrespected you. I have always been a fan and a supporter as you can see by the fact that I was always placed one of you in the donation box at the mandir as a sign of my respect for your glorious history.

Even as I conceal my transparent servility and abject, craven sycophancy beneath a cloak of goodwill, all I want to say is that you are worth more than your bigger brothers and I’d rather have twenty of you than one of them.

Once again, please accept my regret for the many times that I foolishly took you for granted and I confess that when in 2012 I lost one of you I did not mean to say ‘no big deal’ that was just a turn of phrase and if you come to our house in Delhi today we have made a garland out of you and greet you each morning with folded hands.

Please do not desert us in this time of need.

First Published On : Nov 20, 2016 14:01 IST