Thread by @shenoyn

I'm not usually given to dark, depressing thoughts - indeed, the sunniness of my disposition has been known to elicit comment from actual rays of sunshine - but I must confess I feel low this morning. Why, you ask? Well, two incidents. First one - a month or so ago, a bunch of us

college friends on a zoom call decided to get some tee-shirts made with stuff written on it that would evoke memories. One of our classmates living in California got them made and decided to ship them to everyone, including those of us living in India. He decided to ship them to

me and I could then ship them to the others. A grand total of ten customized tee-shirts. The shipment should have reached me in three days. It took three weeks. Why? Because it was stopped by the customs. Because it did not have an invoice. So I wrote a nice letter saying they

were personal gifts of no commercial value. And after that, I was asked to pay the princely sum of Rs 1600 as duty, which I did, and the tee-shirts were delivered to me. Think about this. The customs department of a mighty country, the largest democracy in the world, is busy

inspecting tee-shirts. Kind of alarming, if you ask me, that level of joblessness. The second incident was just this morning. My younger son, a guitar enthusiast, wanted something called a pickup, an eraser sized gadget that sits on an electric guitar and converts the vibrations

of the guitar strings into electric signals that are then amplified. He asked my older son, who lives in the US, to buy one and send it with someone who was coming from the US to India. As luck would have it, the pickup didn't reach in time for our acquaintance to carry it to

India but my older son said no problem, it's a small thing, and of modest value, I'll send it via UPS or something. And when he went to their office, they advised him not to send it because packages were getting stuck at the Indian customs and they would take no responsibility

for that. Younger son was a little disappointed and shrugged it off, but I thought this was a bit much. If this has become SOP for our customs, someone must have had meetings and decided to issue instructions to the rank and file to do this. And the rank and file have to go to

work every day and just block parcels regardless of value for reasons not known to them. How depressing must that job be! To have to answer your child's question "daddy (or mummy) what do you do at work?" with a "oh beta, I block people's parcels". Sad times indeed

I can picture the scene. Highest level meeting. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here to discuss solutions for this grave predicament. The economy is down. People are unemployed and destitute. What should we do? "
" How about financial intervention? Say a cash transfer"

"I don't think we have the money. Any other ideas?"
"How about removing obstacles to doing business? "
" And leave our underpaid employees without a decent source of income? How do you think we attract talent? "
" Sir", a little voice pipes up " how about stopping parcels at

"customs?"
"Why, that's brilliant! Why don't we have more thinkers like this fine lad here? Let's implement this right away"
" Er, what about personal effects, sir? "
" Personal effects too! Infact, the more personal the effect, the harder we must block them. There is no way this

economy can stay depressed with such master strokes being made for its revival! "
And the meeting ends with a small period of stunned silence as the participants take in the audacity of the idea