×
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

Filthy lucre

Last Updated 22 October 2010, 17:06 IST

Often you hear people proclaim, “I bought this ‘brand new’ vehicle recently”; “This is my ‘spanking new’ apparel.” One can’t fail to notice the extra emphasis on adjectives. Maybe it’s an induction effect. Somehow, subliminally we too have imbued from others, this fascination for ‘new’ things.

Interestingly, this admiration to new-looking things is extended towards currency notes too. Be it at any place, your face instantly brightens upon receiving crisp currency notes in mint condition. At the same time, the face screws up too with disdain, on beholding the scruffy and tattered ones. More often than not, the currency notes don that soiled look, not owing to its over-circulation, but because of umpteen asinine stuffs scrawled on that. (Maybe the ‘scrawling inspiration’ is elicited from the unsightly graffiti, adorning some of city’s building walls).

On one currency note, was written, ‘Ajit loves Anu.’ Indeed it lets your creative mind go berserk. Is this Ajit, a reticent natured? Was he a tad hesitant in advertising his amorous feelings before his lady-love? Maybe on that particular day, this young dude, who all along dissembled his dark secret love in his heart’s deep interiors, must have decided to declare before her, all his bottled-up love. But of all places, why this love promulgation on the currency notes, you wonder.

On another currency note was scribbled, ‘Vijay, you’re a rat’! Again you wonder why this anonymous message writer, feeling so ratty about this rat? And whether this writer is a male or female? If it’s a female, was she jilted by her inamorato, who apparently happens to be this Vijay? In case it is male, what had this Vijay chap done to incur animosity of this message scribbler? In the first place, why the heck had Vijay antagonised him?

On currency notes, you also find at times, display of strong bonds and bonhomie, with half a dozen persons’ names, jotted one below other. (Maybe of those, who would have aligned themselves into a coterie of close friends). Not to discount, the innumerous additions and subtractions too that find place on notes. Indeed you are at a loss, thinking whether this maths wizard, wants to exhibit his arithmetic acumen or celerity of mind in calculations.

And then there are people, who are dab hands at drawings and their artistic work gets showcased on, yes, currency notes! Right from cartoons/caricatures to indecipherable modern art, you have it all. Sometimes there are even some words of other languages, crabbedly transliterated in some other language, which may all sound gobbledygook to you.

Truly, now I understand why money is humourously termed as ‘filthy lucre.’ Not figuratively but literally too! Obviously going by the way it’s made filthy, by all these trashy tosh scribbled on that!

ADVERTISEMENT
(Published 22 October 2010, 17:06 IST)

Follow us on

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT