Cashless, heartless, brainless: Love in the time of demonetization

Park benches are empty. Coffee mugs, morose. Hidden corners behind mall pillars, deserted. Such is life with love in the times of demonetization, as imagined by senior television journalist Ravish Kumar. In a session titled “Love In the Time of Notebandhi” he read out some of his new popular Hindi “Laprek” (short for Laghu Prem Katha or Short Love Stories) featuring cash-strapped young lovers. One crazed paramour tells his girlfriend he wants to download the moon like a mobile wallet app. He finds her black kajal unappetizing. It reminds him of black money. “Jab se cashless hue ho, brainless bhi ho gaye ho (ever since you have turned cashless, you’ve turned brainless as well),” she dismisses him. There are loud proclamations of love, and then there are also silent acts, like holding a place in an ATM queue for the object of one’s affection. Practical considerations and national politics, however, do make their way into these everyday love stories. Like with another cashless lover who has turned “heartless.” He wants to throw away the wallet his girlfriend gifted him. It will burn in the Ghazipur garbage dump, he says, and will come back to their lungs as methane gas. The woman’s protestations don’t matter. He doesn’t want to be caught with a wallet. He wants to be seen as one doing his bit for the nation. “Main noteless nationalist hoon (I am a noteless nationalist),” he tells her. Disagreements between friends and lovers with changing political climes came through most of Kumar’s short stories. One of them, set in the pre-state election Bengal have one Pablo and Bela negotiating their love and their opposing party affiliations. “When the political climate was changing there, relationships and friendships changed too. One could sense it in public places, corner shops, and among young people, that they had begun to argue and disagree,” said Ravish, soon adding that a total agreement indicates an inner death of a sort. “If everyone is in 100% agreement, it means we are dead. No one is thinking differently,” he said. If the applause on that one line could be taken as an audience poll, Kumar had overwhelming support.