In the beginning, is the Word

A was for achhe din, the millennial days which have remained just out of reach of the bhakt (see B) for so long that they now enjoy mythical status. A is also for ‘anthem’, and for ‘anti-national’. Out of sheer cussedness, the latter does not stand up for the former. A foolish practice which makes it easy to detect them in enclosed spaces, like cinema halls, using the anthem as a touchstone.

B is for bhakt, an organism actuated by the need to believe. The bhakt is baffled and unsettled by the idea of rational thought and becomes irritable when presented with facts, but there is hope yet — evolution can improve any living thing. B is also for ‘black money’, the only election plank of the BJP for a decade. It used to mean untaxed money, but is now identical with ‘cash’ (see C) in the popular imagination. And cash is trash. B is also for beef, reluctant product of cows who were taken off before their time. Found in abundance in all lands but India, where its discovery — or the most muddled suspicion of such discovery — has led to humans being taken off before their time. However, take good cheer. In the new year, beef vigilantes are expected to be thrown off the stage by vigilant taxmen (see T). And, in the middle distance, B is for Brexit, Britain’s final retreat into the comfort of insularity. It need not bother us.

C is for cash, legal tender traditionally appreciated by all, most emphatically by Gujaratis. Now a controlled substance. C is also for ‘cashless’, earlier a positive term suggesting lightning-fast hospitalisation. It now denotes enforced temporary poverty as a feature of national service.

D is for demonetisation, a financial Houdini act which sucks cash from pockets and funnels it into banks in order to dematerialise it into a cloud of electrons, which will someday, by mystifying means, find its way back into your mobile wallet.

E is for the economy, stupid, which means that India has matured. As in the Western democracies, it appears that future elections will now be decided by economic questions. This will detract somewhat from the carnival splendour of the traditional election, which used to be the Big E, but will it mean that there will be no more mandirs? That would be a welcome change.

F is for farmer, whom the prime minister applauds for planting on schedule by brute persistence, despite being beggared by the freeze on cooperative banks which support farming. This is serious change — farming is clearly no longer the bedrock of the economy (see E). F is for FCRA, a fiscal tap which the government can turn on and off at will, or twiddle moodily when it is bored and upset. The result is the dismantling of non-governmental activity, an activity which governments enjoy. No change here.

G is for growth, the holy grail which assumed purely mythic status post-demonetisation (see D). G is for goalposts, unreliable things which flit drunkenly across a hallucinatory landscape of governmental assurances and rules. On November 12, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley urged people not to rush to queue up to deposit their old notes, since there was time until December 30. On December 19, bankers were required to ask depositors why they didn’t get off their butts earlier. G is for Arnab Goswami, who took TV news to its highest, shreekiest pitch, and who will be back with his own channel, Republic, later this month. It will not transmit below 20 kilohertz, the upper limit of human hearing.

H is for Hyderabad University, which overtook JNU (see J) as the seat of energetic anti-nationalism (see A). The suicide of Rohith Vemula on January 16 provided a new seed for political mobilisation among the youth.

I is for Indian, misunderstood genius who invented plastic surgery and flying machines in ancient times, and is now in reduced circumstances allegedly due to the the machinations of Marxists, Maoists, Nehrus and Gandhis.

J is for jumla, laughing gas loosed upon the credulous in the election season. Also for JNU, a stronghold of anti-nationals (see A) in the heart of the national capital. And J is for jawan, a heroic figure standing tirelessly on guard at the border, a stirring role model for the teeming millions back home who only have depressing bank queues (see Q) to stand in. Sometimes, former jawans are discovered in distress in bank queues, too.

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K is for Kashmir, as always. No change here. See under P for the only other constant in our rapidly changing polity. It believes itself to be strongly related to Kashmir.

L is for laundering, the chameleon-like skill of changing the colour of money. L is also for liberalisation, a relic which is best forgotten since, unavoidably, it happened under Congress leadership. Now, we must seek to recapture the prelapsarian past, before liberalisation, which was the only big bang reform which ever actually happened. Witness the return of big, muscular, arbitrary, heavy-breathing government. Also, the return of strictures on thought and action, and the fuzzy conviction that money is innately vile.

M is for mobile, which is also your bank. Actually, since you cannot get into your brick and mortar bank without survivalist gear any more, your mobile is the only bank you have.

N is for nationalism, the only approved ideology. This is not a constraint, since Indian nationalism is actually internationalist, harking back to Akhand Bharat and Arctic homelands, and attracting ethnic Indians who have embraced other nationalities. N is also for Nehru, who is to blame for everything except demonetisation.

O is the cry of the sick, the aged, the halt and the lame as they collapse all of a heap in queues outside the doors of banks. Call it culling by collateral damage. O is also for the Olympics and Paralympics, which brought much-needed cheer. And for Odd-Even, the numbers game promoted by the Delhi government, which it cannot play this year for legal reasons.

P is for Pakistan and Putin, the only constants in the rapidly changing geopolitics of Asia. But in a sharp reversal, Pakistani actors in India have been declared anti-nationals (see A), though they are merely non-nationals. P is also for pellet gun, whose use on civilian populations was cleared by some unsung bureaucrat whose head should be subjected to ballistic testing. The big P is PayTM, alert beneficiary of demonetisation (see D). P is for the promise signed off by the RBI governor on every rupee note, which is now revealed to be a jumla (see J). P is also for Patanjali, the shuddh desi Walmart which may one day do battle in the marketplace with the real thing. And P is for prohibition, which is back, via Patna, at the heart of politics.

Q stands for queue, in which the sick, the aged, the halt and the lame are wont to collapse (see O). This happens so often that it looks suspiciously like an anti-national (see A) habit.

R is for Reserve Bank of India, once an august organisation guarded by a yaksha and a yakshini, now a symbol of institutional collapse and popularly known as the Reverse Bank of India. The last RBI governor was a rock star economist. The present incumbent, soundly ignored at the Centre, must travel to a state capital even to be heckled. R is also for rail budget and RIP — this year, special fiscal status for the railways will be history.

S is for surgical strike, which is a euphemism for state-funded event management. They are rapidly forgotten the moment that bigger surgical strikes are launched. After the announcement of demonetisation on November 8, no one remembered the headline-grabbing retaliatory attacks against Pakistani assets.

T is for the taxman, whose heavy and dolorous tread will usher in the new year. The daily flip-flops over demonetisation have created a new rule book, which fairly bristles with discretionary powers which could be such fun to play with. T is also for Trump, a phenomenon which has deeply divided America, and for Tata, a house divided.

U is for Urjit Patel, current governor of the RBI, whose office is urgently in need of some urja. U is for the USA, with whom India is aligning precisely when it is in turmoil. U is also for USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data), which allows dumbphones to access financial services. The user has to be pretty smart to use it.

V is for Venezuela, whose people resort to direct action when its government tries to part them from their cash (see C). The country has been forced to defer its demonetisation exercise following physically energetic public responses. Unlike India, there is a real need for demonetisation over there, to contain hyperinflation.

W was for the big fat Indian wedding, which took a beating from demonetisation, whose furies coincided with the Hindu nuptial season. The real fat cats are marrying unimpeded, though. W is also for water, whether as an ingredient in the water wars down south, or spewing from the mouths of water cannons.

X is for Planet X, the Neptune-sized planet of the solar system beyond the orbit of Pluto which CalTech researchers claim to have identified this year. This has nothing to do with the fictitious (and therefore fascinating) Nibiru cataclysm, in which a planet-sized object from deep space is supposed to sweep through the inner solar system. The sweep-by was expected by fans in 2003, but has been postponed to 2017. But it may be overtaken by other disasters.

Y is for yesterday, when all our troubles seemed so far away. Yesteryear, actually. Just think of the past, of change, and it’s almost poetry. Y is also for the ‘Yadav clan’, which has turned into a soap opera. Most significantly, Y is for ‘you’. Yes, you. All change finally depends on you, and your willingness to think, speak and act.

Z is for zip, the procedure officially recommended for the lips of the adventurously garrulous. Zipping it is the finest sign of nationalism (see N), and clinching evidence that you are not an anti-national (go back to A).