Who told you to put all our savings into that bank?” shouts a dis traught wife as she looks at her weeping husband, “It’s collapsed! It’s your fault! We are ruined!” In many homes, it’s either a husband or wife crying out about a bank collapse or very lately the collapse of stocks and shares through the findings of Hindenburg! But who is to blame? Some point at the director of the bank, some the billionaire! And here’s a story: A bearded puppeteer walked into a village. Not only was he a good puppeteer but he was also good with the flute and was known all over as the Puppeteer Pied Piper.
He played his tunes cleverly in the village, and the poor villagers listening to his tunes went into a trance. Even with no food in their bellies they dreamt of money landing in their bank accounts, and days becoming better. They also fell in love with war tunes the puppeteer played that got surrounding villages scared, because the beat was reverberating, the sounds loud and the villagers of the puppeteer felt proud because they had never been able to scare others before.
Then the puppeteer who now had the whole village under his magic spell, looked round and decided his puppets would manage the village. The bank chief whose job was to look after the small savings of the villagers was given the sack, and a puppet put in charge. The judge was told goodbye and as he left, a puppet occupied his chair, and so also the village crier, who announced the village news suddenly found a puppet doing it instead of him. And as the puppeteer played with the puppet strings, the puppets went about doing the jobs deftly, managed by the puppeteer’s deft fingers. The villagers went about their daily lives, wondering, though, why the new puppets could not solve their problems. Forgetting they were only puppets. Then one day, the people lost all their savings and their stocks crashed too.
They started blaming each other, and even blamed the stony-faced puppet in the manager’s chair, and the billionaire, who stared back at them with marble puppet eyes. Immediately, the bearded puppeteer took up his flute again, and played a religious tune, and the people, even those who had lost all their savings, clapped and cheered at the war tunes that were played, and even though broke, broken and beggared they cheered the Puppet Pied Piper, while continuing to blame their wives, and husbands and puppet chiefs, who stared back at them with marble puppet eyes! Who is to blame? Why, the villagers of course, for trusting in mere puppets, who did not have the ability of doing specialized jobs and the puppeteer too for thinking he could do every job, just because he was an excellent puppeteer and pied piper..! bobsbanter@gmail.com
