the demise of the 50 paisa

Waking up to find that people reject you to your face. That’s got to be the worst ever morning. It’s relatively easy to hear people say you’re useless, especially if you know you’ve been sort of out of the scene for a while now. But to find that because of a few rejections, you become rejectable? Now that’s a tough life. Why even get off the assembly line then?
Even the otherwise penny-and-pound-wise rickshaw-walla rejected it. “But I’m giving you four of them… that makes TWO whole rupees,” I explained.
“But madam yeh nahi chalti”
Well, I took it from someone. It chalo-ed to me…
“Arre madam…chalta paisa dena. Koi nahi letha isko.”
But the RBI still makes it, right? Stuff is still priced with the half.
(An annoying realization hits me about how I never bother to collect the change in such situations. But as long as this unreasonable man doesn’t know it, I can have any incriminating realizations secretly in my head)

The rejecter called on the parking attendant. Ask him if he’ll take it, he goaded me. “He’s your friend ok, he’ll be as unreasonable. I’ll call a neutral someone. Aap lenge na isko?”
The vegetable vendor looked blankly at my palm. “Yeh nahi chalti madam”
What is with these people?!!

I used to buy a fistful of orange-toffee once. And a few years down, a band-aid plaster. Then it clinked around at the bottom of my bag for a while. Afterwards I didn’t bend to pick it up when it rolled into floor crevices. Then it was useful in even numbers, to be given away when you wanted to thin your wallet. And now, chalti nahi. When I said it was this or nothing else, the rickshaw-wallah actually went with ‘nothing else’. It’s a horrible way to die, I tell you, being less than your value.