A Mystic Mesmerises a Mermaid!!

The Messy Mystery of Rigyajursama@outlook .com

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward inscribed their names in immortality by their book ‘All the President’s Men’ which likely ranked as one of the longest ever as a best seller. Water Gate has since become the most used cliché or a byword to describe any scandal. All scandals that are graced with the suffix of ‘Gate’ qualify for the high pedestal of recognition for chicanery and complicity and the word is often used  by persons though ignorant of its etymology.

Since the 14th Feb, SEBI has sought to threaten the supremacy of what has ruled the dictionaries for a half a century, and has fathered its competitor and most likely the super star of scandals exactly in the golden jubilee year of water gate’ happening!

India’ claim to Vishwaguru status has secured the gravitas that the position warrants and just awaits its own Carl and Bob to embellish it suitably befitting the grandeur of the feat!

The question that may baffle everyone is how to baptize it (namakarana samskara, for those offended by the use of ‘baptize’) that would make it easily adoptable across geographies and languages, such that dictionaries replace ‘water gate’ with the new appellation.

An ideal word should be short, musical and show its desi origins!

Yogi-dharwaja doesn’t answer to any of the ideal characteristics specified. But the task should be left to the right hands and an ill-equipped mind shouldn’t meddle with it!

Most intriguingly the matter that has secured so much space in the media has attracted little in terms of political attention and the tweets and social media pages of the usual suspects that jump into an opportunity like this to fill the air with fast, furious ,often fake and false allegations that cover every period from the end of dwapara yuga to the present day, have remained stoically silent, à la the yogi who is haunting everyone’s sleep since his profane presence was discovered!

A common excuse to not talk on an inconvenient subject is to say that the issue is sub judice. Anyone with little knowledge of law can say that it would be as transparent a lie as someone who has holidayed with an embodied soul claiming it to be a spirit incapable of human capture or embrace!

A big difference between the common financial scams from the time immemorial like tulips to plantations and orchards, chit funds and NBFCs , to the likes of Enron, Madoff, and a multitude of those getting reported in India with nauseating regularity, is the lack of variety and human touch that distinguishes the NSE imbroglio. All financial scams so far resulted in losses to banks, shareholders or depositors and the primal homo-sapien mind is wired to recognize problems that only fits a historical description.

Little does this case violate anyone’s sense of propriety as the institution under question has only grown its top and bottom line and could happily foot a ever growing salary bill to all and sundry and still keep some of the most enlightened financial experts who constituted its shareholder base and the board of directors well rewarded and most sanguine.

To associate the colour of a scandal to mere sharing of data that too not in paper which costs a few cents but in bytes and bits, isn’t it only reminiscent of our own childhood when the afternoon nap of the elders was the best time to put the hand in the cookie jar?

What scandal is this, for a seven year old to stuff its mouth with a couple of more pieces of the half open Cadbury’s when the mother busy in the kitchen? and equally, should a CEO who has delivered stellar shareholder value be pilloried for a trifling offence of losing a little self-balance given that a charm of a yogi is quite irresistible with so many of them real and surreal, well and ill clad in our midst!!

It is best to leave this subject here as little value can be added to expatiate that the information shared could have changed the way someone traded or exploited some technical flaw in the system or what you have and can imagine with regard to an institution that was the nerve centre dealing with cumulative value of trades that would have exceeded the GDP of the nation multifold.

Though to leave the subject here is as difficult as walking out of a movie hall just as the heroine is stepping into the swimming pool!

And yet Rigyajursama@outlook.com needs to be savored in parts and not in a hurry in one fell swoop. Shouldn’t Atharva been chosen being more appropriate as it largely deals with black magic and the like? And just as soma is offered as oblations to invoke the invisible, the important pieces of evidences in the form of laptops etc have been offered to scrap dealers so that the Yogi would have been seen and engaged with by only one and none else!!

Hope I haven’t unwittingly given a clue for naming the scandal!!

Note

Hope in its mood of generosity of making compliances voluntary that SEBI doesn’t allow the pittance of the fine levied to be paid voluntarily if the offenders choose to!!