Dear Sir/ Madam,

I have just returned from a multi-cuisine restaurant near my house after a meeting with my neighbour, Mr. Balaraman. I used to hold Mr. Balaraman in very high regard for many years. Even though, and let me be frank, I always used to wonder how he paid for his exorbitant lifestyle. I think he is a retired bank employee. But every week, you can see somebody delivering things to his house that he has purchased on the Internet.

I don’t want to point fingers at anybody or spread rumours. But Mr. Balaraman was out of station for two weeks immediately after the Prime Minister announced demonetisation. I am just saying for your information and not suggesting anything nefarious is going on. What made it worse was that when he was away, somebody came to delivery a new television to his house. I generously agreed to store it in my house till Mr. Balaraman returned.

For two weeks, the TV sat under the staircase. It was a huge flat-screen curved nonsense. I mean what is the point of such a thing? For foolish people who want matching TV and bathtub? Every time my grandchildren walked past, they would look at it longingly and then look at me with disappointment in their eyes. And then they could go into my kitchen, open my fridge and drink Diet Coca Cola that I bought from the supermarket, in glasses that I stole from Air India flights at great risk to my personal dignity.

So I met Mr. Balaraman this morning over channa samosa and ras malai. We were having our usual conversations when I decided to order a Diet Coca Cola. Immediately Mr. Balaraman took out his phone and opened WhatsApp. And he handed the phone to me. After making a mental note of the exorbitant cost of his phone, I looked at the message.

The message said that scientists in the United States had discovered that if you put a human tooth in Cola for three days, the tooth will dissolve completely. And it also said that in many rich countries people use Cola for cleaning their toilets because it has so much acid. After I had finished reading this and was reluctantly giving his phone back, Mr. Balaraman said that I should stop drinking such things immediately. Without even asking me for permission, he called the waiter and cancelled my order. I ordered a rose milk instead.

Sir/ Madam, because of my friendship with Mr. Balaraman, I did not say anything at that time. But I had so many things to say. Bloody fool, am I going to walk around for three days with Diet Cola in my mouth till my teeth dissolves completely or what? You idiot. And acid it seems. Does Mr. Balaraman think that the human stomach is lined with paal payasam? Bloody money-laundering, TV-buying imbecile cancelling my order without asking me.

After our meeting, I walked back home and decided to watch some news on my normal, white-market, flat television. After a few minutes, I realised something.

Sir/ Madam, it just occurred to me that India is not only 70 years old, but has also started behaving like a 70-year-old person. Everyone is screaming and shouting at everything, everyone is afraid of new things, everyone has an opinion on things they don’t even understand, and, worst of all, everyone is ready to believe any nonsense that is presented to them. Fine, Mr. Balaraman is a retired gentleman. If he will believe nonsense, who can blame him?

But even young people are like that now. Just now I have received a WhatsApp message from one of my grandchildren that if I enter my ATM pin in reverse, police will immediately come to the ATM to rescue me from any danger. So I messaged him back saying my ATM pin is 1331, and how can police tell if I am in danger or not? My grandson has not replied. Perhaps he is in his IIT coaching class. He wants to become a computer science engineer.

This is the youth who will lead India into the next century.

Sir/ Madam, how will all this end? I worry about it very much.

Finally, sir, have you considered an article outlining how one can tell if friends or acquaintances are involved in criminal activities? I think many readers will benefit by this.

Yours in exasperation,

J. Mathrubootham