I don't know what I did...

It was about seven monsoons back I had my first brush with the subject called book keeping and accountancy. (For the removal of any doubts - seven monsoons back means in the month of August of the year 2002) It was called as Managerial Accounting that time. It involved a lots of intimidating terms like provision for doubtful debts, appropriation account, sundry creditors, etc...and the most frightening of them all, the two words that always bagged the prize for the best couple - debit & credit! For some peculiar reasons known only to a select few called the Chartered Accountants, Debit&Credit were always together like Siamese Twins. The subject also involved rampant use of the small, black gadget called the calculator; one got to fill many A4 sheets with lots of numbers partitioned by numerous lines - horizontal and vertical. The final thing that you created was called the Balance sheet or Consignment account or Joint Venture account, based on what was asked in the question. But my answer did not vary much between the questions. Only the heading changed. The marks I got also did not vary much. Only the denominator kept changing! And it does not end there, one is also supposed to draw a horizontal line at the bottom and generate a mosaic of words and numbers under the title - Working Notes.

Coming to the calculator...during those four years that preceded that monsoon seven years back (!!hold on..hold on.. I just meant during my engineering days that preceded my MBA days), I had used my calculator quite extensively. In fact to unimaginable levels. Those people in my college did not believe in words, they spoke the language of numbers - and only numbers. As such I did not have any problems with that, but the real issue was they also expected me to speak the same language. Even in a paper called General Biology, that we did in our first year, there were numerical problems! Well.. not only numbers, usually all the papers also had some very bizarre symbols like.. d, a f, g, s, D, F, y etc.

I was equally scared of these symbols. Especially the last one. It reminded me of Trishul - the Hindu mythological weapon of Lord Shiva and many local deities. It represented the omnipotent, unbridled force that would destroy any evil. But I was using these symbols on a day-to-day basis. I was scared. Naturally. But my calculator was not afraid of any symbol - it had all these symbols and much more. The calculator was called Casio V.P.A.M fx-100s.

But the calculator needed for Book keeping and accounting is like our dhobhi's puny donkey. It has just the 10 digits, keys for the four basic mathematical operations, and the essentials like "=", MR, % etc. But it is expected to do carry loads and loads of clothes that ranged from rags to rich shirts. For instance it is supposed to find out out the right entry for the Stock valued at Rs.8,700 that was destroyed by fire on 25.03.2007, but for which the insurance company admitted a claim of Rs.5,800 only, that too in the next year. Poor donkey! About the dhobhi.. the lesser said, the better!

We are having a small test of accountancy and book-keeping tomorrow.. and I really don't know what I did many monsoons back...