The best laid plans of men and mice go awry

Darling Ma-hinder

I raised an eyebrow or two dearie when you read your budget speech last week. I admit my arm shook a tad causing me to spill a smidgen of champagne on my poplin skirt when told I had to pay you for the privilege of driving into a pot hole on the road.

In the usual course of business Thellie is not in the habit of doling out cash for the pleasure of driving into a hole darling but then I can't claim to be a big fan of the golfing circuit in good ole Paradise.

If I had anymore eyebrows to raise I would have darling but why is the martyred proletariat punished for owning a telephone? Imagine for instance if the martyred Pee did not own a telephonic instrument. Could you have listened in on a conversation, tapped a line, or been tickled pink at the sweet nothings whispered in the ears of steamy lovers? No. And the upshot? A very bored President on our hands.

What is the point in investing in spanking new apparatus that could listen in on mobile phone conversations when you go and throw a wet blanket on hours of free entertainment for NIB officials. I mean to say if you can't watch Maha Gedera, Batti and Kindurangana of an evening what can you do except listen in on real life?

And just as we thought CDMA phones were kuru kuru less you go and slap a tax on that too. When the phone bills come home m'dear, the phones may still be kuru kuru less but the Paradisians won't be. 

Having charged down the corridors of parliament like a young mustang to deliver your speech the last thing you want to hear from the likes of young Ravikay is that it was a damp squib. I don't know what the green buck was on about but he was seen murmuring death trap, death trap, making observers wonder if he had been reading too much Ira Levine when it dawned on them that the green chap was talking about a debt trap.

In their usual way the uppity green fellows pooh poohed your speech calling it a juvenile work perhaps prepared by the temporary accounts clerk after a course of night tuition on the subject and a quick glance at a book picked up from the Vijitha Yapa Bookshop on 'Budget Speeches For Idiots.'

I must tell you darling even I was prompted to gasp like a dying fish when you advised private companies to seek foreign investors and chatted on at length about milch cows and such udder nonsense.

Really dear what the devil do you mean I wondered by increasing your allocation from four to seven billion big ones while only a small one billion smackers was set aside for education. It addled my frontal lobe a bit before I realised that a man of such deep understanding, hailing from the deep south and wearing a shawl that would be described in the fashion pages of Paradise as a deep vermillion colour to boot, was really the only education Paradise needed.

You may be pleased to note that a burgeoning look of worshipping admiration such as Queen Guinevere might have directed at Lancelot on observing him getting down from his white steed in a stud like manner was to fleetingly cross my brow before the moment passed.

What a smashing idea one would think to advise private companies to seek foreign funding and not burden the local banks. Not even the local banks set up by cutting red ribbons and unveiling plaques to help small businesses and may be even medium businesses if one is to read between the lines. And with you darling it's all about reading between the lines and lying between the sheets eh!

Surely local banks must be overburdened only by you and the state. And having already spent the 500 million US greenbacks on little knick knacks and trinkets little wonder you want the banks, especially the state banks to concentrate on you and yours.

How else will you gallivant to New York and Geneva and Los Angeles with a gaggle of ministerial nitwits ready at the drop of a five cent bit to cackle like a thousand hens laying an egg and squander away?

The Lankaputra Bank dearie must be congratulated on acting true to its name. The father Vas Gee runs the bank in order to fund the hair-brained schemes of the son Sour-gin. To whit: One large white elephant named Mihin. And dear ole Godfather that you are, you managed, Thellie noticed, to surreptitiously sneak in 400 million big ones for your little flying saucer in the sky in the guise of some estimate or the other.

But estimates forsooth dearie. My face flushed and my hair bristled darling not unlike the quills upon the fretful porpontine as I realised that you had again doubled the daily bread that came in litres at 80 proof.  

Anyway darling the next time you get writer's block or nerves at the prospect of public speaking try not to start up a war over it. I suppose in a way creating a ruckus in Muhamalai and expecting another fluke shot like the Tamilselvan gem would have sealed the deal in the well of the House.

Perhaps it was your clerk from night school who put you up to it knowing the weakness of the budget script. Start off with a win on the war front and all will be forgotten his tuition master may have advised. Another successful military offensive and hawks become doves and stomachs  for some reason are sloshing about generously - if not with milk, then with patriotism.