Before the devil gave us e-mail spam, there was the phenomenon of useless mail landing in our letterboxes. Mostly, this meant promotional literature, announcements and correctly folded pieces of paper pretending to come from someone who valued your existence. Despite the knowledge that 99 per cent of such mail was rubbish, we opened them hoping that it would be..., but inevitably, it would be rubbish. Not so for the talented Aishwarya Rai. A parcel from Rotterdam reportedly landed up at her old address.
It would have not caused much of a stir with customs officials if a declaration letter had not described the contents of the parcel as “electronic goods”. The customs officials allegedly tried to contact Ms Rai, but to no avail. Thus, the desperate measure of opening the parcel. Apart from a DVD player, a pair of binoculars, a branded T-shirt (when was the last time we saw Ash in a T-shirt?) and “other electronic goods”, the officials also discovered Rs 14 lakh worth euro currency notes. Not much money for Aishwarya, perhaps, but enough to break foreign exchange laws.
But who has broken the law? Ash insists that it is not her cash. She certainly wasn’t interested in picking up the parcel — but then, neither would you, if you knew what was inside and had to pick it up from the customs department. Was the money and the “electronic goods” (not to mention, the Ralph Lauren T-shirt) meant for somebody else? While the Special Investigation and Intelligence Branch goes about its job to crack the case, we ponder: of all the mailing addresses in all the pin codes in the world, the Rs 14 lakh in cool cash had to be sent to Aishwarya’s. Moral of the story: never undervalue snail mail.