It must be some inter-galactic conspiracy that the Thirteenth of June always turns out to be Monday. Almost always, that is.

It also happened to be the first day at school of a new academic year. I was not like most other kids. No, not just by way of my physical dimensions, (and intellectual capabilities, haha) but in a few other ways too. For one, I hated Monday, the Thirteenth of June.

It was a rather gloomy day to begin with. One was required to wake up at unearthly hours – 6:00 am to be precise – to the shrill sound of an archaic alarm clock that had been passed down through the generations in my family. A cold bath later, one was expected to dress up in shiny new school uniforms for the new academic year. I distinctly remember that feeling of freshly starched cotton chafing against my delicate soft skin. Gosh did they make those clothes for pterodactyls? I wasn’t one for sure. Though I looked elephant-ine dimensionally, my skin was far from being as hard as theirs. I am tempted to make a mention of those unsightly, rubbery, deplorable little brown sandals that our school (Smt. Sulochanadevi Singhania School, my alma mater. I miss you) required all students to wear. I’d really not like to waste words here. They were disgusting. Period.

Not being used to these torturous routines of slavery, quite unsurprisingly, I’d be running late on the first day of every year, unfailingly. To expedite proceedings then, my mother would generously (and judiciously) equip me with a couple of tight slaps where they mattered the most. What a delectably enjoyable start to the year I say!

So then, it was a rather gloomy day to begin with. And the Gods concurred. They let loose mighty thunderstorms, unmitigated rains; and the BMC dutifully complied with dug up roads, choked drains and tsunami-floods. The Rain Gods sure didn’t like young kids being pulled out of their cozy beds at unethical (unethical?) hours. They showed it. And how!

Then one day, it was Monday, the Thirteenth of June. I was going into Standard Ten. The morning had nothing new to offer from the past nine Thirteenth of June’s that I had successfully endured. “This is the last time”; I kept telling myself. Bang! It landed right in the middle of the sweet spot of my well-endowed cheek. I had to hurry up. But it was the last time. I was trying hard to get into those goddamn trousers. After five minutes of breathless wrestling with my own tummy, (of the caliber that would earn me a place in “Ripley’s Believe it or Not”) I heaved a sigh of relief…that, unfortunately, brought about my undoing…and the undoing of my trouser button. Zwang Twang it let loose from the shackles of its thread with ferocious velocity – enough to help it break the shackles of the earth’s gravity as well. (Last I heard, it was on its twenty seven thousand five hundred and thirty first trip around the sun.) It was the last time in any case, so it ought to have been the worst of the ten. It was!

Since Standard Ten in school, the ghosts of Monday, the Thirteenth of June had been exorcised to oblivion till…

Till err…Monday, the Thirteenth of June. I get out of a swank car, push my Ray Ban into my hair and hand over the keys to the valet to park the car at my reserved parking slot in the huge parking lot. (Wow, rhyming. I am making poetry!) The sun, shining resplendently, has banished all those gloomy clouds to another day in July. The past few years have seen me struggle past an Engineering degree, and fight my way into a fast-growing software company. I am being paid well (uhh, creative liberty, ok). But I am being paid, so I have to pay the Government of India. Do I hear a voice at the back there saying “For what?” Let me elaborate, young man. I have to pay the Government to dig the roads, to choke the gutters, to create floods and famines, to increase unemployment, to worsen traffic conditions, to fight a pointless war, to pay for those dastardly politicians’ needless foreign jaunts, to finance their…hey, don’t get me emotional ok. There’s only so much I can fit into one column. The bottomline being, that I have to pay the Government. “How much?” Good question, young lady. That brings me to the frightful, chill-down-the-spine activities of this day, Monday, the Thirteenth of June.

“How much?” is what everyone I know is trying to figure out. Without much success, I must add. At last count, I was told I should be expecting Rs.11,892 to be credited to my bank account. That amount has successively gone down from Rs.14,542 to the current number; rather depressingly, needless to say. Out come the huge MS-EXCEL tax calculators, with their garish disclaimers and endless set of rules; and an unbelievably complex concept of Fringe Benefits, which is intended to help me save tax – 10% to 6.732% (Wow, I can buy a Maybach with that kind of money!)

Mr.P.Chidambaram is a wise, intelligent and supremely sensitive young man. In a magnanimous display of unprecedented philanthropy, he has allowed the Indian masses to invest up to a maximum of Rs.1,00,000 this financial year and claim gigantic tax benefits; gigantic being the ironically sarcastic keyword there. In effect, that opens up a world of possibilities with respect to what one wants to with one’s hard earned money. As an aside, did you know that the buyer of a Maybach gets to choose from a few thousand leather seat options, a few thousand dashboard wood colour options, a few million seating configuration options – if one applied simple permutation and combination formulae, that would translate into three million plus total combinations. No wonder when a prominently infamous Gutkha baron’s dumb lass went shopping for a Maybach, she had to hire McKinsey and Company as “Automobile Option Selection Consultants.” My point being that the number of possibilities of saving tax that Budget 2005 throws up is mind-numbing to the senses, to say the least. May be it’s because it’s my first year as BreadWinner. And my first year as a TaxWhiner.

I am learning the tricks of the trade though. Much like I learnt those silly history lessons on the first day of every academic year. I wondered then – why was history made in the first place. I wonder now – why do they pay me at all?

The mystical figure has gone despondently down to a pitiful Rs.9,734 for the month of June 2005. Hardly an amount that justifies driving to work in a swank little car. As visions of me wading through waist-deep water (fortified with bits of shit, and garnished with dollops of sewage) to get into the company bus flash before my eyes, I can see dark clouds appear on the horizon. The sun’s gone. It’s going to rain. It’s Monday, the Thirteenth…of June.