The Wallowing Monkey

I was reading a Ruskin Bond story which was about his father. Suddenly, I recalled somewhere reading that he has a brother. But, there is rarely any mention of his brother in his stories. So, I got curious about his brother.

I quickly checked on Google. Google showed that he has a brother called William who is settled in Canada, but there was no other information available about him. Then, I searched for William Bond Canada. It showed a LinkedIn search result. So, I went to William Bond’s LinkedIn page but the profile did not look like that of Ruskin Bond’s brother. For one, the person was much younger.

Then, I saw button notifications on my LinkedIn page. After quickly browsing through my notifications, I thought of giving a cursory glance to the home page. On my homepage was an article by a fairly popular young VC. Popularity judged by number of likes, shares and comments off course.

I browsed through the VC’s article about his learnings from chatting up with a startup founder. These founders are the most learned these days espousing pearls of wisdom as they speak. In the article, the founder had shared that how being a founder is uncomfortable because one has to try new ideas each and every day.

Then, I got curious about the founder. So, I clicked on the VC’s podcast link which was at the bottom of his article. I did not listen to the podcast but read the summary. I learned that the founder was a young lady and her name was Payal Sharma. My curiosity still not satisfied, I searched for Payal Sharma on Google. The search took me to her LinkedIn profile. I found on her profile that prior to founding her startup, she had worked in another small company. Now, this company was founded by my ex-colleague Ankur. I had worked with Ankur around 10 years ago. As the surnames of both my ex-colleague and the female founder was same, I had a hunch that they were related to one another.

I further searched for both of them on Google. In one of the article, I found that they were husband and wife. I further read that they were settled in Mumbai and had a kid. Then, I did some further Googling on my ex-colleague to find out that he had turned serial entrepreneur and manages some 3-4 startups.

I remembered the time when we worked together. I wondered how he had managed to achieve so much professionally.

Finally, my thoughts came down to how I had not been able to achieve anything in life and had wasted all those youthful years.

This was another of the usual series of thoughts that I have been having lately. From Ruskin Bond’s calming stories to another bout of self-pity in 20 minutes.

Image source

On cost of terrorism

Ever since the terrorist attack in Paris, there have been a spate of articles discussing the cost of terrorism. Major costs of terrorism are victim costs, tourism decline, higher insurance premiums, increased security costs etc.

Before we start on the costs or terrorism, here is a monetary riddle to consider.

“It’s a slow day in some little town……..
The sun is hot….the streets are deserted.
Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

On this particular day a rich tourist from back west is driving thru town.
He stops at the motel and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.
As soon as the man walks upstairs, the owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.
The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.
The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill at the feed store.

The guy at the Farmer’s Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her services on credit.
She, in a flash rushes to the motel and pays off her room bill with the motel owner.
The motel proprietor now places the $100 back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the $100 bill, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money & leaves.

NOW,… no one produced anything…and no one earned anything…however the whole town is out of debt and is looking to the future with much optimism.”

Source : http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/01/an_answer_to_a.html

In the above riddle, there were no real goods produced, but the flow of currency erased all the debts. In an experiment tight scenario, where the entire money comes back to the tourist, this might work but in real world such a scenario would be highly unlikely.

Let’s think about the increased security costs because of terrorist threats. We can safely assume that people spend more on security post terrorist attacks. Now, in an Indian scenario let us consider two characters – a rich businessman (has a factory, a big bungalow, a big car and so on) and a security guard (from a poor village in India, is semi-literate and is unable to make any extra money for his family if he stays in his village).

Because of terrorism threat, the rich guy employs the poor guy and pays him Rs8,000 per month. The security guard effectively sits on a chair for the whole month but gets his monthly salary at the end of it. He consumes some of it and sends some of it to his family in his village. His family use that money for better food, education of children and so on.

With the guard sitting on his chair for the whole day, no real work is done. But when he gets his salary, the capital flows from the rich guy to the poor guy and the poor guy spends all of it and he and his family are better off compared to the scenario where he would be under disguised employment in his village.

In an alternate scenario where there is no terrorism and no security is required, the rich guy would not have to spend Rs8,000 per month on security. With the amount saved, the rich guy could have,

1. Invested the money in some asset
2. or could have created more jobs by investing in his business
3. or many other mixed uses

Among all the above scenarios, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where the capital (Rs8,000) would flow to the poor guy. Unpleasant and undesirable terrorism has created an opportunity for the poor guy to earn a steady monthly income, which would otherwise not be possible given the limited skills of the poor guy.

Terrorism has huge costs for many, but not necessarily for everyone. Even something as hated can have an unintended positive effect on the life of someone.

On Instant Gratification

In the famous marshmallow experiment, children who were able to wait longer for a preferred reward were found to fare better in life.

I have been wondering for the last few days, if we have taken this “waiting patiently to enjoy the fruits of our labor later” too far.

Right from the time we start schooling, we are taught to work hard towards securing the highest marks. We are persuaded to clear one exam after another in hopes of a better future. This continues in college where we work towards standing out so that we are “set” for life. Now, there are times when I have really enjoyed studying something, but not always and not everything.

Later in life, most of us pick jobs that require us to work 12 hours every day and sometimes on weekends also. We are rewarded with money, but money is just a currency, a means to something and not an end in itself. We go on accumulating money postponing living life we want to live for later. We pass our 30s, 40s, 50s before we are forced to slow down. What happened to the 4 hour work day that Keynes had predicted in 1930?

But, do we get fulfilment even in these later years? Running after things and accumulating becomes a way of life. Is it possible to switch to different mindset after all those years..

On tolerance

More than 100 years ago Swami Vivekananda gave this talk in Madurai.

“There was a time in this very India when, without eating beef, no Brahmin could remain a Brahmin; you read in the Vedas how, when a Sannyasin, a king, or a great man came into a house, the best bullock was killed; how in time it was found that as we were an agricultural race, killing the best bulls meant annihilation of the race. Therefore the practice was stopped, and a voice was raised against the killing of cows. Sometimes we find existing then what we now consider the most horrible customs. In course of time other laws had to be made. These in turn will have to go, and other Smritis will come. This is one fact we have to learn that the Vedas being eternal will be one and the same throughout all ages, but the Smritis will have an end.”

“The essentials are eternal, the non-essentials have value only for a certain time; and if after a time they are not replaced by something essential, they are positively dangerous. I do not mean that you should stand up and revile all your old customs and institutions. Certainly not; you must not revile even the most evil one of them. Revile none. Even those customs that are now appearing to be positive evils, have been positively life-giving in times past; and if we have to remove these, we must not do so with curses, but with blessings and gratitude for the glorious work these customs have done for the preservation of our race.”

Read the full speech

On fearless opinions

Recently, I came across this old article by Salman Rushdie probably written in 1984. What struck me about the article was the fearlessness of his criticisms. One might agree or disagree with his views, but no one can deny the fact that he has a view and is not afraid to put it forward.

Outside the Whale – The full article

On handling anxiety

View at Medium.com

“Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions — not outside.” — Marcus Aurelius

Came across this interesting article on how to manage anxiety and regrets.

On curiosity

 That is David Hume’s toe, one of my favorite philosophers. Came across this nice article on midlife crisis and how researching on Hume helped the writer come out of it. Highly recommended.

How an 18th-Century Philosopher Helped Solve My Midlife Crisis

On photos that shake our conscience

Once in every few years, there comes a photograph that questions where we are heading to? How can we let our children die when we as humanity have the power to stop the unnecessary death.

The photographer who awakened our conscience

The vulture and the little girl

On the right to die

A few days back, The Supreme Court of India stayed Rajasthan High Court order declaring ‘Santhara’ illegal. Santhara is a very old Jain ritual of fasting unto death. This raises few important questions related to how one chooses to die.

The Right to Die

The Jain religion and the right to die by Santhara

The future of workplace

 Productivity, efficiency and similar buzzwords have been big in companies since the World War II got over. But, mostly these were used to track blue collar workers – workers who would sweat it out on the shop floor. In the last 15-20 years more and more data around every aspect of work has started getting captured. Reading about Amazon, it makes us wonder what the future of work is going to be like for white collar workers.

Link to the full nytimes article on Amazon