This Translation Tuesday, Sri Lankan author and Toronto resident Appadurai Muttulingam recounts one person’s mischief at the expense of the impassive Canadian bureaucracy. When the narrator, in search of a human connection and the money he is rightfully owed, is rebuffed by automated mails and call center robots, a solution presents itself in the form of voicemails: whimsical, garrulous ones sent directly into the heart of the system, intended to flush out human beings hidden behind the machinery. Will the issue be resolved? Read on to find out.
Canadian $0.23. Its currency value amounts to 15 Sri Lankan rupees, 8 Indian rupees, 333 Italian liras and 20 Japanese yen in their respective denominations. That is not what is important. The Canadian government owes me these 23 cents. For many years, the government has been confused about how to return this amount to me, and I also don’t know how to get it back. Canada, a member of the world’s important group of countries known as the G8, has been cheating me for 23 cents.
This is how the problem started. For cooking my food and running the furnace, the Canadian government’s natural gas company supplied the gas, which saved me from hunger and cold. I am grateful for that.
Every month, they would send me a statement of account. Along with it, other monthly bills would arrive as well. I would review the bills on a Saturday morning and write the cheques to settle the accounts. These cheques would then be placed in window envelopes and mailed with appropriate stamps pasted on them.
At one time, the natural gas company sent me a bill for the amount of $199.77. For the sake of convenience and also because the amount in my account was in zeros at the time, I sent them a cheque for $200.00, meaning that I had remitted 23 cents more.
That’s how the blunder I made started.