ULTA PULTA
Genuine fakes

If you go to Karol Bagh’s Gaffar Market, you can get a genuine imitation of any branded item. By genuine imitation, I mean the shopkeepers there claim to give you the first copy. I asked them what they meant by first copy. They said they copy from the original brands not from the fake items. Recently, a fake Desi Wal-Mart store was discovered in Ulhasnagar in the suburbs of Mumbai.

We Indians can take pride in making bogus things with highest ingenuity. Bogus certificates, fake voters’ cards or bogus ration cards, we are capable of making anything that that could be passed off as a respectable genuine thing. Lately, a social activist found a ration card in the parking lot of Ulhasnagar Municipal Corporation bearing the name of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul Gandhi and daughter Priyanka Gandhi. If somebody can manage to get a ration card made in the name of Sonia Gandhi’s family and claim kerosene on that card, then anything is possible here.

I don’t find it shocking at all to know that this ration card had the signature of the rationing authority on it. Just imagine, if this ration card was found in a excavation after a couple of centuries, then people would admire the simplicity of the Gandhi family and would exclaim, "Look, Soniaji, Rahul and Priyanka used to queue up to get kerosene on their ration card in those days."

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