Never to Fear & Never to Hate

Finished watching a ten-episode series named Imperial Receipts where Dr Shashi Tharoor states facts about British colonialism of India and narrates with absolute passion some of the historical moments including humanly unthinkable atrocities that were unleashed by the British rulers those times. Some of those moments may even be blood-curdling to most of us who live in a civilised modern world.

While it should be a painful reminder of our past, both for the colonised and the coloniser, I loved the way Dr Tharoor ended with a conversation that apparently happened between Nehru and Churchill during 50s, post India's independence. Churchill said, he was surprised that Nehru did not hate them and was able to be civil with them, after all what they did to India. Nehru replied, stating he was taught by a great man, Mahatma Gandhi, never to fear and never to hate.

Whether the above conversation truly happened or not, nothing seemed to be more relevant in the modern world and should serve as a great reminder for leaders across the world, in politics or corporates, to learn from the mistakes of our past and live a better present to create a beautiful future for the coming generations!

Here is the link if you are interested:
https://lnkd.in/dvT4hDTN

Threshold of expenses

I’ve fond memories of a well spent childhood in our ancestral home built by my grandpa seventy years back. Among the many traditions followed, one I distinctly remember is the annual practice of getting a little bit of pocket money from elders during major church festivals. It was called ‘Perunnal Podi’. While my parents and relatives were generous with the amount, the experience was quite different when it came to getting the amount from my grandpa.

I learned a lot on negotiation skills and bargaining to say the least during these times. Most often it ended up with a win-win situation since I was the only one in the family who was successful in getting whatever amounts I managed from my grandpa. Though the effort didn’t justify the result, getting two Rupees from him was hailed as one of the greatest achievements in my life. Do note that this was a considerable amount for a school going kid especially when you know the fact that these were the times when a mint flavoured candy costed just five Paisa!

Born in 1913, less than a year before World War One started and having lived a blessed life of more than a century, my grandpa has literally seen it all! He had been through both the World Wars and more importantly the great depression of 1930s. Add to this, his father’s untimely death while my grandpa was just a fifteen year old teenager left him in charge of a large family with two recently married sisters and two younger brothers. They had a thriving business with a favourable-on-books financial status where people owed them double the amount of money than the debts they had. But the economic depression broke everyone’s back and many of them couldn’t pay back the amounts owed which forced by grandpa to sell some of his properties and settle his own debts.

This entire experience taught him the value of every single Rupee and that was quite evident in all of his transactions. He literally had an iron grip on his expenses to put it in the nicest possible manner. He used to remind us to be diligent in our expenses each time we ask for money or plan to spend them. This was supplemented with his lifestyle where he hardly created any arena for spending money unnecessarily. He took bare minimum risks when it came to investments and had a strong preference to lead a debt-free life which obviously made him quite comfortable when he hit the bed every night.

Planning the threshold or limits of your expenses is quite a personal decision for each one of us. We could either choose to spend a lot and still be within our budget or could spend a little and save the rest for future investments. Nevertheless there are certain factors to be considered while taking decisions on investments especially the ones that require you to spend from your future income. When you plan the payment for an investment as EMIs you need to ensure that you clearly have an understanding of your income so that the EMIs along with your other expenses don’t leave you high and dry.

If we take a quick stock of the categories of our expenses for a month, some of us could be in for a shock. We might be spending a lot more than we should on certain types of expenses. Be it our shopping or eating out expenses or any other category, we ourselves are the best judges to answer this simple question, ‘Should we be spending so much on this category’?

When you effectively supplement the answer to this question with a planned amount to be spend for that category every month, you’ve already taken your first steps for better planning of your hard earned money. What could be a pleasant surprise is the fact that introducing these checks alone will be enough for you to meet all of your planned expenses and even leave you with an amount as savings.

Once you have optimized your spending limits by applying this check for all your categories of expenses all you need to ensure is that this pattern is followed in your life. Then comes the next logical step. What can be done to increase your income? While for some people both these acts can go in parallel, for others it might be worthwhile to put the checks on the expense first before exploring the options to increase the income. We’ll possibly talk about this some other time.

May you be empowered with the first step to get the threshold of your expenses right and lead a more fruitful and fulfilling life!

God bless.

Hot & Spicy!

A few months after I started with my Post Graduation course outside Kerala we got our first holidays. It was my first experience of staying away from my family and I was super excited to head back home! Nothing during that age was better than having the lovely food prepared by my mom. Needless to say, she had prepared those stuff which I loved the most.

Quite a few dishes awaited me at the dining table and was anticipating an attack any moment. The saliva was creating Mexican waves in my mouth and soon enough I started with my most favourite dish. As soon as I took the first bite I could sense something wrong! My taste buds were on fire and the entire food pipe experienced an intense burning sensation. That’s when I truly realized how spicy the food back home was!

The few months I was away being deprived of mom’s food and my taste buds experiencing an almost bland food from the college hostel, the spices back home became unbearable. That’s when my dad told me this story about one of the boldest grandmothers we’d in the family who was a connoisseur of spicy food! Kunjammachy was her name.

Kunjammachy was far beyond her senior citizen age at that time and it had been a few years since her eye sight failed her. But her taste buds still rocked big time! She loved spices and wanted everything served to her really spicy. One day she got a chutney made by one of her granddaughters. The chutney made for Kunjammachy was already extra hot that usually the rest of the family wouldn’t even attempt to try that.

The chutney was served to Kunjammachy and she had a spoonful. What followed next was a rhetoric of blasting to her granddaughter citing that the chutney is nowhere near being spicy. A lecture followed as well on how to make real spicy chutney. The granddaughter was quite taken aback with the lashings and she went back to the kitchen, doubled the spice quotient and served the dish again.

A quick tasting of the chutney by Kunjammachy and what happened next was unprecedented. The granddaughter saw a ‘flying saucer’ coming right at her and sure enough it didn’t miss the target. Her forehead received a massive blow with the saucer in which she served the chutney. Just like thunder following lightning, promptly came the avalanche of yelling and screaming!

“That’s it!” The granddaughter said. She went out, right into the backyard and searched for a specific genre of chilli the name of which literally translates as ‘Cheek Buster’. You touch it with your bare hand and you’re done for a few days with extreme burning sensation from the chilli. The granddaughter was so miffed that she got a couple of those deadly chillies and grinded them along with the chutney and promptly placed it in front of Kunjammachy.

The eyes that couldn’t see twinkled! Kunjammachy’s senses became all alert. She took a spoonful and tasted a little bit of that fiercely spicy chutney. All what it took was a few moments before tears started rolling down those cheeks. Blood rushed to her face. Her whole body was heated up like crazy. The entire food pipe and the internal organs must’ve got a flash fire shower! She was absolutely shaken.

Surprisingly she didn’t stop there and in fact had a few more spoons of the chutney. Then came the statement, which from that day, became a folklore in the family.

She told her granddaughter these words, “Good one dear, now it is a little bit spicy at least!”