Hipster Doofuses

“Are you recording this?”

“Yep.”

“It’s too noisy to be a podcast.”

“We are going to reinvent podcasts.”

“How?”

“We are going to make a podcast into a blog post.”

“…”

“Can we order?”

“Why does he still ask us for our names?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have been thinking a lot lately.”

“Not again.”

“No seriously like life alternating stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Like at the end of the day, what are you really doing?

"Nothing?”

“Yeah exactly. Nothing! Something! Is it relevant? Are you helping people? Are you helping yourself? Are you just sitting on a chair and watching cat videos? What are YOU really doing?”

“I am not doing. Therefore, I am.”

-sips coffee-

“Do you ever think we will grow up and become ‘men’? You know, wearing suits and driving a mini-van and kissing our wives goodbye while patting the head of our kids as we go to our shit job which we hate so much that we would rather just switch to using Windows XP on an Acer laptop like that guy over there…”

“Suits in Bombay? Are you high?”

“I am serious.”

“Okay, Windows XP with or without service pack 2?”

“…”

“What?”

“Seriously.”

“I think it just comes down to what choices you end up making in your life, doesn’t it? If you choose pizzas over burgers…”

“Burgers over pizzas? What is that, a metaphor?”

“Burgers over pizzas, bro.”

-sips coffee-

“What does that even mean?”

“It means you have accepted life.”

“Accepted life? Did you eat some brownies?”

“Acceptance, my friend, is the last stage. You have accepted that the thing which was always around, the thing which was always there for you was the right thing. All we ever craved for was pizza but if you think about it, like if you really think about it, a burger is the answer to all your problems. A burger, my friend, is the right choice. When you start choosing the burger over the pizza, you know you can take anything life throws at you because you have accepted life and there is no turning back.”

“Are you talking about a girl?”

-sips coffee-

“Aren’t we always talking about girls? What do guys talk about besides women?”

“Sports?”

“I would talk about sports but Formula One really isn’t a sport.”

“Asshole.”

“Good morning to you too.”

“Tech?”

“I would talk about tech but you bought a Windows Phone.”

“I hate it.”

“I will send you files on Dropbox now.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t have an official Dropbox app that’s why.”

“Why did I do this to myself?”

“You do things. It’s okay.”

-sips coffee-

“Games?”

“Grand Theft Auto V on PS4?”

“Yep.”

“How is it?”

“It’s amazing. Trevor reminds me of Arvind Kejriwal.”

“He has a Windows Phone too.”

-sips coffee-

“We should go back to talking about women.”

-sips coffee-

“I don’t know man, women are just extremely complicated. This girl on Facebook blocked me after she read a post I wrote on my blog.”

“What post?”

“There was this one about how commuting.”

“Oh I read that, it was stupid.”

“I do inane observations, don’t hate.”

“You just write down what other people are saying outloud.”

“Well, it’s still a skill.”

-sips coffee-

“Sure.”

-sips coffee-

“I thought we were gonna talk about taxation and stuff?”

“Yeah, no shit, who doesn’t like discussing taxes after a long day of crunching numbers?”

“Hashtag MBA problems”

“Hashtag FuckoffJuhuStarbucks”

“Hate.”

“You do realise we are not normal, right?”

“Normal?”

“Yeah?”

-sips coffee-

“Normal? What normal? There are no normal people in this city.”

“Well there this was this guy who was honking at 7 am on the fucking sea-link. That’s our ‘normal’ now.”

“Can feel hate all the way across the table. Will make Commuting Part 2”

“Don’t be butthurt.”

-sips coffee-

“Sly.”

“Taxes!”

“Taxation”

“Sounds much more cooler.”

“What is it. Tell.”

“Taxation is essentially just the government telling you that you need to pay to have access to certain facilities and enjoy certain rights?”

“So basically it’s like paying a yearly club membership?”

“Yeah”

“But what facilities? A membership to a club gets you access to hot bae’s by the swimming pool. What facilities do you get by paying taxes?”

-sips coffee-

“I am still working on that bit.”

-sips coffee-

“I bet the government is too.”

“I am actually gonna post this on the blog so for the record: There are two different categories of taxes people pay, indirect and direct. Indirect is when you essentially purchase something, either a product or a service and direct is when you get taxed on your income. There is no escape, the government will find you. If you spend, they tax you, if you don’t, they still tax you.”

“Who doesn’t know that?”

“I am sure folks don’t.”

“Engineers read your blog?”

-sips coffee-

“People tell me that the government doesn’t have a good business model.”

-laughter-

-sips coffee-

“Well the defence for this is always that the modification of a policy like taxation gets too complicated and they’re usually too busy trying to sort out shit on NewsHour or Times Now or whatever that stuff is called.”

-sips coffee-

“If you had a chance to end somebody would Arnab Goswami top the list?”

“On most days, yes.”

-sips coffee-

“Good to know.”

“Although I do get it, everybody likes being nice to the havenots.”

“Sure. It’s because we are made to feel bad about the things we enjoy in our lives.”

“Well it’s something related to humanitarian grounds or something to give a shit about people, right?”

“What have those people ever done for you that you are so compelled to give a shit about them?”

“Hate.”

“Make those people read the butthurt post.”

-sips coffee-

“Do you hate paying taxes as individual? Do you hate the ideology? Or do you hate the way it’s implemented?”

“Am I being interviewed?”

“Not telling.”

“Pretty much the way it’s implemented.”

“Explain.”

“Well you know it.”

“Yeah but most people don’t.”

“Lol engineers.”

“Don’t be that guy”

“Well anybody who has tried to work here on their own stuff knows what I am talking about. Everybody knows this city pays the highest taxes and yet we have the worst fucking infrastructure. It’s worse than fucking Africa. The roads suck, the street lights don’t work, the healthcare is non-existent, the pollution levels are not in control, the education system doesn’t work and the way the taxation is implemented is essentially just pointing to the fact that making money is a bad thing in this country. It’s killing the entrepreneurial spirit amongst the young folks and it’s making people like me extremely angry.”

“Entrepreneurial spirit?”

-sips coffee-

“Fuck off.”

-sips coffee-

“It’s true though. I am cool with paying taxes as long as I get certain benefits from it, the few we are entitled to are so fucked anyway that people seem to just be like LOLTHIRTYFIVEPERCENT. I am not saying give me the best possible health-care in the world but atleast have something there. SOMETHING. ANYTHING.”

“CA files taxes?”

“Yeah and when I am filing taxes and handing out my accounting books to my CA my expression changes to the exact same one, you know the one which I had going when I found an alien object in my food at China Gate.”

“I think I still have that video.”

-sips coffee-

“I will end you.”

“End poverty first so we have to pay less tax.”

-sips coffee-

“Poverty sucks and it should be eradicated but not at my expense.”

“Well we aren’t a capitalist country.”

“No shit, Sherlock. During the license-raj, companies couldn’t grow vertically, so they all grew horizontally, essentially they expended into other categories of products and services instead of becoming better at their core and profitable sector. And that is why my friend, we have bloated companies like Tata, Reliance, Wadia and Godrej because it was either the governments’ way or GTFO.”

“Who doesn’t know that?”

“Same people who don’t know direct/indirect taxes.”

“Well played.”

“Remember Nehru?”

-sips coffee-

“Profit is a dirty word, Jeh.”

"GOD FUCKING DAMMIT. FUCK OFF.”

-sips coffee-

“Think about it though, taxation is so flawed. Let’s assume that I stay in Mumbai and I pay the same rate of income tax as you do and you live in Pune or Thane or whatever. What does that mean? You make the same amount of money but you spend less on things like rent, entertainment, food and travelling which means you pay less for everything and I am here in this city paying 3x the price of almost everything and yet I have to pay the same amount of tax as you? Where my benefits at bro? Why does the government want me to move to a village? Because 70% of the people live there? Does the government want me to be a peasant?”

“Well, Sharad P is a peasant.”

-sips coffee-

“OH NO YOU DIDN’T.”

-sips coffee-

“Well, I mean the new government, I think, did promise the GST and abolishment of direct taxes when that comes in and that’s what most people are looking forward to in the next few sessions of the parliament.”

“The government just wants to increase the sales of broomsticks at this point, I don’t think they give a shit anymore.”

“No but let’s go with the flow, market trends, hopes, people being stupid, the usual shit. Let’s assume for one minute that the government does intact pull that off.”

-sips coffee-

“Pull of GST and abolishment of direct taxes?”

“Yep. Pulls it off, passes it as a resolution and implements it in the next assessment year.”

“Well if they do that, they deserve to win again. Nobody has messed with the tax system in a long time now.”

“Well, the Congress did.”

“They messed with the structure not the system.”

“I miss Manmohan.”

-sips coffee-

“Aren’t you flying Air India, soon?”

-sips coffee-

“Yeah.”

“Do you get an award when you do?”

“What kind?”

“The one they give out to national heroes who are ready to lay their lives for the betterment of this country?”

-sips coffee-

“I have nothing to say to that.”

“Why would you fly Air India?”

-sips coffee-

“It’s cheaper, I get miles.”

“Holy shit you got an Air India FF?”

“Yes.”

-sips coffee-

“I feel bad for you.”

-sips coffee-

“Fuck off.”

-sips coffee-

“Do you think farmers should be taxed?”

-sips coffee-

“Good question, I don’t want to answer that.”

“Why not?”

“My friend is in the secondary and tertiary sectors of agriculture, he might be offended.”

“Peasants read your blog?”

-sips coffee-

“Hating strangers now?”

-sips coffee-

“Don’t be a pussy. Tell.”

“Our economy isn’t based on the primary sector anymore so I don’t have a good enough reason to support my answer but I think it should be on a case-to-case bases, some of our farmers are struggling to survive and you know that’s a fact and abandoning them just because we have call centres in Bangalore? Fuck that, son. But yeah a blanket no-tax policy for farmers? Nope, uncool.”

“Pussy.”

“Hate.”

“What is that? Is that a fucking JCB?”

“Oh look that’s the government. Wave to them, be nice.”

-sips coffee-

“They’re digging the road, again?”

“There it is son, there it is. They are waiting for you to give them the money you earned so they can pull this shit off year after year in the name of job creation.”

“Well that’s a grey area.”

-sips coffee-

“What? How is that a grey area?”

“You’re asking the wrong question.”

-sips coffee-

“What?”

“The right question is: Is John Gruber a grey Uber?”

“Why?”

“Twitter joke.”

-sips coffee-

“Did you use ‘grey area’ just so that you could make that joke?”

“Yes.”

“Kill yourself.”