Naan ITR Kadavul

(translates to: Me the Income Tax Returns God)

Did it myself this year too. They make it more and more saral each year, really. Let me give you the highlights of this year's journey, which, if all goes well, will end tomorrow at the IT office.

1. Filled the form for the wrong assessment year. Which, in the 6th year of doing your taxes yourself, one should not make mistakes about.

2. Paid tax on bank interest
- added quarterly interests incorrectly (yes, used a calculator) AND
- filled the wrong challan AND
- for the wrong assessment year
Ended up paying more tax than necessary.

3. Wrote an application requesting the assessing officer to correct the assessment year. Dad dictated. I typed. Saved it in notepad. With the name "stupidity". Printed it. The application now has the word "stupidity" at the place traditionally reserved for the pilliyar shuzi (i.e. in the top center)

4. Dad and I got bhai to fill the ITR form. For the wrong assessment year. He was so exhausted by the end of it, i dont think he is filing returns again. Ever. Today dad brings up the point that he may not exactly be an employee.

5. Assess became the word i have most frequently typed/written over the past couple of days. Even more than semi-colon, which is probably not a word anyway? And every time i write that word, the first 3 letters stand out in bold and do a little dance.


Who says Gods dont make mistakes.


P.S. Next year the plan is to have a home loan. Whether i have a home or not. I have heard ITRs get terribly complicated if home loans are involved. So my ego will shut up and let me dump the whole thing on an agent.

Profundity

A pen found its way to the desk next to mine. No one calls it their home, the desk next to mine, but people often drop in on it, for work more than pleasure. So when i found the pen there, there wasnt one person i could trace it back to. I asked the most probable suspects, none of them owned up to the pen. I've always wanted to stand t my desk, and yell something out to the whole floor. So machchi market like it'd be! I didnt. Instead, i moved the pen to my desk. Where it lay (and still lays, this one has a happy ending. Or maybe, picture abhi baaki hai.) and occasionally was of use to me.

Now, if you've worked in a software company, you'll be wondering how i can recollect a pen. One pen is pretty much same as the other, and while finding an unexpected pen is always a pleasure, it never sticks around long enough for you to get to know it better. There is almost no place at the workplace where it cant get lost. Desk, conf room, coffee machine, drawer, loo... So, why?

This pen was different. Heavy. Metallic gold, with silver engravings. A _personal_ pen.

Pens do not stay secret for long. If you have one, people around you will come to know of it. And so, this pen too started getting borrowed. What was special about it though, was that it also came back. With startling regularity. Even when i gave it to people saying - i dont know whose it is. After 4-5 such excursions, a theory begun to form in my mind.

What if, this pen's looks are responsible for its coming back? It doesnt look like a typical office pen, so a) people remember who they took it from and b) they feel obliged to return it. It helps, i thought, that it looks expensive. (Only much later did i spy the Pierre Cardin written on it). The pen, its been on more than 15 outings now, and each time, its come back.

If i were a person with that bend of mind, i would write about how 3 such "special" pens could serve a whole floor much more efficiently than regular pens for each person and then maybe come up with a deeper economic theory. But i'm not. So i will simply say this. I might as well have found a cure for common cold.

Bang bang bang

If i had a fully loaded gun, all 6 rounds at my disposal, here's what i'd shoot. After, of course, a long winded speech describing the how, the why and dazzle all with the sheer genius-ness of my evil.

1. My leg

For disrespecting the powers of Vitamin D. For being the most high-maintenance part of my life. For the dull pain that makes me want to pull it out and throw it at people with good intentions.

2. Good intentions

Gah. Enough already! No no, i'm not talking about your good intentions, your good intentions are all good. But in general, they are choking me.

3. My head

For accommodating only two types of computational machinery.

Boolean circuits - hard-coded sections of my brain that give an instantaneous answer to a set of inputs, no feedback, no adaptation possible.

Infinite loops - that consume a lot of brain power but generate no answer.

The Universal Turing Machine would be so glad with my head. The halting problem, at least this once, will be no problem. (Ok fine. Just a joke. Laugh. Dont punch holes in my theory)

Not so long winded after all. Guess the movies have taught me something after all. Now, Looks like i've only managed to find 3 things to shoot at. I'm going to use two bullets on each, just to be sure.

And then i shall become fully headless langdi, and haunt the men's bathroom. Or the women's. How would i ever know.

You change my world

So you find yourself on this planet, see, with this life, and no one tells you why or what. There is you and there is this world and there is all this time, and you have to figure out how best to fill it up. Most people find something or someone of interest to them. They read, paint, draw (which, if recent discussions are to be believed, is not the same as painting), listen to music, watch sports, television, hell maybe even like their job. These are people with read-only access to the world.

Then there is that minority with read-write access. People who change the world, and by change i dont necessarily mean they discover laws of physics or be mass murderers. But simply, people who make the world more interesting for everyone else.

For no particular reason, i'd like to thank some of the people with read-write access to my world. Not at a personal level, you understand, more the sort of people you'd play the 20 questions game about.

In no particular order:

• Simon Singh. For opening me up to non-fiction
  
• Richard Dawkins. For making evolution so damn interesting
  
• Joss Whedon - for firefly. And the image of a lone guy losing to evil studio bosses. But living for ever. Maybe because of that defeat.
  
• Aaron Sorkin. For Studio 60, for a few good men, for the characters, for the writing.
  
• Friends. For making them real people.
  
• xkcd - for making me feel 'in" on an insider joke
  
• Bill Waterson. For Calvin. And Hobbes.
  
• Before Sunrise. For inspired execution of a simple idea.
  
• Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, P.G. Wodehouse. For making me laugh.
  
• ARR - For Aditi.
  
• Chuck Lorre - for The Big Bang Theory, but more for his vanity cards.
  
• Tintin
  
• Batman, Superman. For showing that struggles give meaning to victory
  
• Javed Akhtar - for his words. And his kids ;-)
  
• JK Rowling. For the world that lies beyond platform 9 and 3 quarters.
  
• The Irish accent. I dont know who i have to thank for this!
  

Some observations on my list:
- Where are the Indians? And the women??
- And the complete absence of people who have anything to do with CS, now what does that tell you? That CS needs heroes :P
- People who make me laugh are more likely to be up there than people who make me think.
- Fiction writers strangely dont find much representation. Maybe because while collectively they more or less form the basis of my existence, there is no one writer who i can pick.
- It might seem bit strange to see TV series up there. But these are not merely ones i like. I'm glad they exist in the word i exist.
- It is very likely that a few years down the road i'll look at this list and be embarrassed by some of the names i put in there. A few years ago, i might have put in Ayn Rand, Meg Ryan, Robert Ludlum, Cho (but after Enge Brahamanan, no way) but now you wouldnt catch me dead doing that. No Sir. Or Madam.

Anyone interested in taking this up as a tag? I'd love to know!

P.S. I have almost concluded that i am incapable of writing what i set out to write about. No, really. This post started out by being about how much not being able to remember things sucks. It makes the world less interesting that it could be.