I usually end the year by rummaging through old papers to spring clean all unwanted stuff. Imagine my ache when I found an old envelope from my parents containing a gift of Rs 51,000 in 102 crisp notes of Rs 500.

Clearly, I had chosen to preserve the memory of my 50th year on this planet rather than spend it. And now the gift had become useless, or worse, criminal, if I tried to squirrel it into the formal banking system after having exhausted all remedies offered by an astonishingly capricious Reserve Bank of India (RBI).