"Maam, love is in the Air, yo ho ho ho ho ; Love is in the Air yea hey hey hey hey ; Love is in the Air laa , la la la la .. .......".
"Really Sockie, did Sahib order a brunch of roses for me".
"Please Maam, too early for the twilight zone. Earth to Maam please, reality bytes please" .
"Sockie, You think cupid's arrow does not strike the English heart".
"Think Shakespeare, Sockie".
"Think Henry the VIII, Maam".
"Think Byron and Keats, Sockie".
"Think Jack the Ripper, Maam".
"Think Rochester of Jane Eyre"
"Think broody and secretive. We have that at home, Maam".
"Right Sockie, forget the roses . Best keep my head, you think . So who is in love then?"
"Well, Maam, there was this little item in the Gulf News about Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru, India 's first Prime Minister and Lady Edwina Mountbatten wife of Lord Louis Mountbatten Britain's last Governor General in the post indepedent India .Lord Mountbatten played a very important role in the transfer of power from the British to Indians. Not clear if he had any role in dividing India".
"It is believed/rumoured that lady Edwina and Mr. Nehru had a deep liaison of the hearts amidst the major political storm in 1947 that emanated from India's partition Interesting, you should mention roses though, Mr. Nehru was known to wear a red rose in his lapel. Perhaps a signal to Lady Edwina. This bit of history was revealed by a daughter of Lady Edwina , and the Congress is now trying to supress the story from becoming public".
"Well, Sockie , like everything else within the Congress, the story has been public for sometime but no one knew about it until it was made public abroad.. VIP affairs of the heart are generally not discussed in India .Also, you must understand , what was regarded as an affair in those days may be merely a man and a woman gazing into each others eyes or holding hands. Besides, sex is still taboo in India".
"Really, Maam with a billion + live evidence to support its existence, how can that be?"
"Well, Sockie our police often loose evidence!"
"But, we talk around it, we talk at it, we talk through it, even do it but, we do not talk about it".
"So Maam, is that why Lord Mountbatten took the British out of India ? as revenge against Nehru . I believe many Indians, who had to cross borders and relocate after the British left , bemoaned their fate under a free India".
"Worth a dekkho, Sockie!. No one has offered this explanation before".
"Maam, is the recession finally over?, we could go shopping for some new clothes for you and me, and buy some of those expensive dog treats".
Well sockie, there lived this economist Keynes who wrote some time in the early 19th century
"The moral problem of our day is concerned with the love of money, with the habitual appeal to the money motive in nine-tenth of the activities of life, with the universal striving after individual economic security as the prime objects of endeavour, with the social approbation of money as the measure of constructive success and with the social appeal of hoarding instinct as the foundation of necessary provision for the family and for the future"."Does that mean we should save and not spend. I mean Maam there is only so much money in the world. The banks could not have lost more then we put in".
"Au contraire, Sockie. Mr. Keynes promoted spending. Hoarding is what causes recession and results in many other social ills. . Economists create revolutions out of the thin air of want as opposed to need , with their theories of meltdown and inflation and deflation .You see that happening around us this very moment. Protests everywhere, from China to America".
"And you are wrong, the banks did loose more because the balance was on paper only. The banks played upon people's fears of financial insecurity and offered to make money with money.
The bankers got greedy as the people became obsessed with making more money, more possessions, more houses . They borrowed and borrowed and the banks continued to lend. And the experts had no clue as to how this scenario would play out in the end. Finally, when the banks went bust the bankers said they did not see it coming".
"But, Maam it is as clear as the writing on the wall, that if one keeps borrowing then one clearly does not have the means to pay back" .
"Spot on , Sockie".
"But, Maam, why only investors, why didn't the bankers go bust as well".
"Good question, Sockie, I shall present it at the next meeting with our banker".
