After the storm

Phagwah’d out
While not of the Hindu persuasion, your ever vigilant Eyewitness enjoys Phagwah as much as your average Ramdular down the street. How could he not? Did he not, as a boy, make sure he was there to watch the Holika conflagration? There’s probably a pyrotechnist lurking in every one of us – and it certainly manifests itself most fully when we’re young. To look at those flames reaching for the skies and hear the crackling of the combustion, awaken very primeval emotions.
Maybe it goes back to our caveman ancestors who’d tamed fire, but was always wary of what could happen if they allowed it to get out of control. Morbid fascination in the modern age. I ambled over to the local Holi pyre the other night, but sadly the mound wasn’t as high as I’d remembered. Or was it that I’d gotten taller since those bygone years? Anyhow what was absent for sure were boys hurling coconuts on wire tethers into the burning pyre, to be roasted.
No wonder the dental business is booming these days: weren’t we assured that if we ate the roasted coconuts from the Holi fire we’d have ‘strong teeth’? Your humble Eyewitness is a living testament to the truth of that claim… all his pearly whites are still there. Even if they might not be as pearly as they used to be. Nasty smoking habit of a dissolute youth.
Even though it’s been years since I went around the block – much less the street – dousing everybody on Holi morning, I do come to the front of my yard to be duly inundated by the roaming bands of children. And I so did Wenesday. I even had my bucket primed and waiting to return the favour.
Nowadays, most people seemed to have forgotten that the smearing of the ashes from the Holi fire was supposed to be auspicious.
I take the vermillion abeer and powder in good spirit, but if the truth be told, they do seem to exacerbate my sinuses.
What makes the process quite painless; however (much less painless) are the sweetmeats that accompany the imparting of the colours. Mrs Eyewitness may make one or two sweets on Phagwah… but nothing like the concoctions that issue from the kitchens of my Hindu neighbours. Just to gaze at them is to get an immediate sugar high! So today we’re back to the regular world. The signs of Wednesday’s revelries still abound, but the world is a bit more humdrum, isn’t it?
After the budget…
One would’ve thought that with Holi in the air (literally) some of the political types would give the budget a rest.
God knows that for the next month or so we’ll be hearing about it enough. But there are some who neither water nor sweetmeats will deter from their appointed rounds of bashing the budget. Most of them were from the expatriate brigade in New York.
But maybe we can understand their frustration… not much Holi up there in the cold basements they inhabit. The dyspeptic duo Rose and “Thunderbolt” Singh weighed in that “This is just a plain vanilla tax, borrow, and spend budget.” Well, hey!! What’s wrong with vanilla? It’s the biggest selling flavour ever… no? Means that it’ll please most of the people out there.
And that’s precisely what the budget does… give something to everyone. As far as taxes go, it seemed to escape the refugees that the tax rate has just been reduced from 33 1/ 3 per cent on income over Gy$ 50,000 monthly to 30 per cent! That’s more money in the pockets of ordinary people to spend as they see fit!
Borrow and spend?
Where’s the borrowing to spend? Has the cold in NY frozen their eyes (their brains we know have been frozen for a long time), so they couldn’t read that we ran a surplus this year?