Monday, November 29, 2010

puzzle of the day -- count the zeroes in the scams

It must have been a dream. I was waiting for the traffick signal to turn green when a child waved newspaper at me -- "aaj ki taja khabar --IPL ghoala.. ghotala". The light was green and soon I was at second red signal The child was shouting "Tharur and Pushkar ghotala.. ghotala". Again the light turned green and I reached the third signal where a child was narrating "4000 hectors of prime forest and hills and major dam handed over to Lawasa for commercial exploitation.. ..., ghotala, ghotala". Then came the fourth red signal and the child was saying "wheat rotted in FCI godowns for being given cheaply to liquor brewers.. ghotala ghotala..." then at 5 th red signal the child shouted "Adarsh society scam, ghotala.. ghotala... ". On 6 th red signal child was shouting "CWG scam, ghotala.. ghotala... " Then came 7 th and the child was waving the paper with "2G scam... ghotala,..ghotala". At 8th signal the shout was "karnatak land scam ghotala ghotal...". On 9th it was "LIC bank loan ghotala..ghotala..." and at the 10 th red the child had a difficult headline but he had mugged it up very well "Nira Radia tapes exposes fixing of the match between politicians and industrialists and media persons and the bribery-experts .... this match-fixing scale puts lalit modi -- the arrogant fixer to what a shame! ghotala.. ghotala... in the land of 10 (scam) wonders.. ghotala".
Somehow I escaped without purchasing a single newspaper. On the 11 th traffick signal was a real jam. Someone was saying "a popular school teacher has given this arithmatic homework -- if 1 poor child needs Rs 10,000 per year for education, then how many children can be educated upto 10th standard with all the money that the country paid to the pockets of looters in these scams ? And the entire city population has assembled to solve the math bur are still counting the zeroes to get the answer."