Government Nouns: Signature

It is a moist night; the kind that wets dry clothes right out of the shower, perfuming them in unwashed mustiness. Heat slaps like an underpaid whore: "I said - handy five; mouthy ten!" There is always an exchange. Dollars for pesos at an untranslatable ATM, pressing buttons that are meaningful and meaningless at the same time. Mom birds vomiting worm offal into chicks that just protest loudly, stupidly, hungrily, in critique. Snails that exchange the first rain for a short crawl, but stop and due while being fried by the concrete when the sun returns angry.

But the best kinds of exchanges come with a 'quid pro quo'; added mundane benefits that should otherwise be free - as harmless, but important but essential as a signature. The weird power of a signature - to build, kill, buy, sell, marry, be born, okay, deny, be dead. Bestow power, strip it away. How does one justify the power of a scribble, scratch, or sometimes ornate and even substituted with a rubber stamp? "I hereby authorize..."; chunk with the inky dunk of an unauthorized authority. But I digress.

This is still a mosquito-hummer of a night in Madras, Tamil Nadu. Surreptitiously, in fear of doing something illegal to do something legal, an elderly couple that owns a small bakery parks in a dark and uriny parking lot by the Ashok Nagar Metro station. In the lady's bag, a secret packet, wrapped in today's newspaper, the headline screaming - "A new India under Modi!". Inside, a ward of Rs. 500 notes - 100 of them, some crisp, some still stinky from sweaty bosoms. A humid package; with the promise of permission to add another electric oven to bake one hundred more loaves. An authority that comes with one signature.

She arrives, blending in the crowd, a seeming no one but someone but everyone. "Here you go; would like anything else? Tea? Dinner?"; as the package exchanges hands. She folds the package, difficult paper and shoves it into her bra. "No".

"Get home safe; I'll sign it all tomorrow! Happy baking!"