Of all the people who have lived in the sin city, few have earned such a public profile as our dear darling P.K. Haldar. Not only did he steal more money than we can count, he has more than we even know. Not only did he steal the money, he probably even laundered the whole lot, part of the lot or boxed it away, no one knows. In fact, no one even knows where he worked and from where he looted. To call him a magician is a small time word. He has actually shown the world, that HE CAN do what sin city deserves.

It's true that sin city is full of thieves of his kind, some bigger, some smaller. But nobody has really shown the flair or the imagination that he has in stealing. He actually showed everyone why most of the people are donkeys and he is the stallion of the pack. Or even better he is the master of the herd taking a large collection of fools to the slaughter.

But in a city, where there are more thieves than there are ants, how many are distinguished enough to have 80 GFs?. I mean seriously. And this information came from the ACC. How did they know as it's not exactly known for digging into sex lives of the rich and famous? Apparently, people have been flocking to the ACC taking evidence of such GFs. Wow, wow and double wow. Of them, one has been arrested on 13th January and all are agog at it all.

But what does having 80 + GFs means in terms of intimacy encounters?

If Haldar was spending 356 days spread among the 80, that would make it 4. 5 times a year per GF. Now that would not be too many times would it? I mean once every 3 months. Now that hardly qualifies as a GF. It's almost an encounter by chance.

In sin city, no self-respecting GF of a person like Haldar is ever going to be happy with that few number of hellos. But then the information is coming from the court and the ACC lawyer was hoping mad, though we are sure not from envy. He didn't approve of so many GFs probably. He has a point. After all, not only has he fled but when he wanted to return to return the money, the court ordered him arrested. It's a serious matter though not sure if it's the money or the GFs that is corruption.

It's then that the think tank CPGF- Centre for Policy on GF's- pointed out that it's all about the balance of payment. That is when you have 80 GFs, you rate of theft is also influenced by that. Which means in simple lay people terms, you pay X every time you miss a date. That is again measured by the total number of expected encounters and the wealth of the misser. That rate of course is set in the GF Stock exchange. Not all GFs stocks are held high but. There is a minimum though that too depends.

Let's take a hypothetical case. Suppose you are pegged as a weekly encounter GF. That means 52 encounters yearly. So if you meet only 12 times a year, you have a debt of 40 encounters. So what do you do? Well, that's the point. You pay.

CPG says it could be a crore per encounter so instead of a meet you give a crore. So 80 X 40 = 3200 crores minimum. God knows how long this has been going on. So now do you understand why Haldar had to steal? It wasn't greed at all. It's just the extraordinary number of GFs putting pressure to implement contracts. Poor Haldar. Done in by his GFs.

A touch of honesty as bad as deceit

I visited a pharmacy the other evening during my daily walk to buy a thermometer. During corona days it's an essential tool but didn't have one. I am a fairly regular there. I asked for a moderately priced one. I was shown and the price was 350 Taka.

I said I didn't want such a pricey one just a simple functional one. Out came another and it was priced at 180 taka. I knew the sales person as he serves me regularly. I haven't owned one in years so didn't know what was the right price when the manager of sorts and other sales people started to say, "Why are you doing this with the murubbi? Don't you see he comes here regularly? He is a senior citizen, as old as your father. You shouldn't do business with everyone."

So the price of the same just dropped to 80 taka. I mean Christ. I bought some medicine and walked out but was really zonked. I mean how many times have they done this before and with how many? If they can do it with me, a regular, they must be milking the random ones much more.

Somehow I will think twice before visiting that shop again.