There’s an old joke about a madman obsessively banging his head against a wall. When a bystander asks why, the madman responds, “It’ll feel so good when I stop doing it.”
Demonetisation was like that. Months of pain and privation gradually eased, as cash came back into the system. There was immense relief as one could indulge in the civilised niceties of tipping the bellboy at a hotel, or simply eat an ice cream on the street.
This process of pain followed by cessation leads to “normalisation”: People are gradually trained to endure situations they would have previously considered unacceptable. This weekend
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