One of the biggest irritants that one finds almost always, month after month and year after year is the electricity bill- isn’t it? It’s one of those things that you always wish wouldn’t cost you at all or at least not that much, right?
Yet, one’s got to be accountable for the electricity consumption and there is, quite simply, no getting away from paying the electricity bill, regardless of how little of it you consume every time.
But what is one to do if someone’s charged with an electricity bill of Rs 128 crore? In a world that’s often absurd and often funny, could there be anything as diabolical than an electricity bill of Rs 128 crore?
Perhaps, on first counts, you would think not even the Tatas or Birlas or Ambanis would get levied such a mammoth figure.
In most cases, whether privately owned businesses or huge corporates, none have ever been levied a figure as mighty as an electricity bill of Rs 128 crore. Yet, it made for a perfect headline for the bizarre and redundant when, in reality, someone received a bill of that enormous proportion in a perfectly normal sense.
In what comes across as a really absurd but true piece of news, a resident of Chamri, a small town in Hapur, of India a man was asked to pay an electricity bill of Rs 128 crore.
The man, puzzled but obviously, asked a simple question: we only use light and fan. How can the amount be so high?
In return, a department official replied, stating that a technical issue may have resulted in the misspelled figure and that it would be rectified. Nonetheless, everyone did get a weirdly funny bit of news out of the unusual.
But what’s rather strange is that owing to the man’s obvious failure to pay the bill- well, he surely was no industrialist- the electricity department has cut the connection.
Shamim, the receiver of the weird bill, understandably shocked to hear the amount, approached the electricity department where he was told to pay the bill for the resumption of his connection.
And what’s more? To his utter surprise, Shamim told the media that, “I am running from pillar to post but no one is listening. It seems, that the electricity department wants me to pay the bill for the entire Hapur.”
Can you imagine the plight of the old man? Well, whoever said that strange things happened in India wasn’t joking!