Musings of a retiree

I retired from corporate life in 2013. The past eleven years has been a good ride. 

The usual advantages are of course there. Not having up get up at 6, get ready by 8, and rush to meet your doom is the obvious one. When I go past the slaughter house in Cox Town, I see goats led by  their goat herders, rushing inside, since there is some grass enticingly kept there. 

Whenever I step into a glass building, the likes of which despoil the whole of Bangalore, I close my eyes and mutter a silent prayer to my guardian angel, " but for the grace of God, here would have been I, thank you God". 

Many of my friends who could have retired earlier than me, did not. They stuck around for as long as they could. Some of them lasted till 60, but most left some time in their fifties. One columnist coined a good term for it, he called it "forced entrepreneurship". 

What are you doing after retirement? I am thinking of starting a startup. I have started a startup. I am consulting with a startup. Now, that seems very much like getting back into the rat race, but if that is what they want, so be it. They really like doing that stuff, I cannot for the life of me figure out why. In any case, the start up bug does not last for long, it is just a brief foray, a transition period to get adjusted to the idea that you have retired, somewhat akin to the interim job that the prisoner gets when finally released after twenty years in jail, which helps him to slowly ease  himself into the demands of the world outside. 

Quite a few of my friends have taken up "stock trading" after their retirement. I know only one who actually makes money on it. The rest are in it for a bunch of different reasons, none of them to do with stocks. Reason 1: have to get out of the house, spouse eating brain. This is from the friend who went to his broker friend's office every day to do stock trading. Reason 2: have intellectual horsepower and nowhere to deploy it, and am used to doing a lot of activity for very little output - stock trading is the right fit. Reason 3: No one can really make out how much I am working and how much money I am  making when I do stock trading, and it is impossible to judge. If I take up baking for example, every day I will be told that my cakes taste like mud! 

I, on the other hand, chose a different path. I took the path that appeals to a few retired people, that is that of giving Gyan. I became a part time teacher in an MBA college. Now this comes with a load of advantages. Adv. 1: The spouse is happy that you are busy, all spouses need to see you busy, otherwise they get mighty upset. Adv.2: There is a captive audience willing to listen to you, or at least pretend to be listening to you. I have reached the stage in life where no one listens to me at home. Adv.3: I get a lot of respect, the same respect that my Direct Reports used to give me when I was in the company. The students laugh at all my jokes and keep telling me how great I am in different small ways. The fact that I am the sole arbiter of their marks has nothing to do with it of course. Adv. 4: I have some place to go to,  that is very important. 

One thing I have noticed about retired people. They are immensely courteous to each other. Whenever my retired friends call me, they always say, "Dinesh, I hope I am not disturbing you in the middle of something important?". Now,  they know and I know that I am not likely to be doing anything important, but the pretence has to be maintained. I return the same courtesy when I call them and , as if on cue they reply, " oh I was in the middle of something, but for you, Dinesh, I will make the time!", which is of course exactly what I want to hear. 

Meanwhile I get more time to write, more time to travel, and more time to do nothing in particular. And I am always busy - there is something about work, it expands to fill the time available. The last three days, for example, I was busy on my Tax Returns. When I was working full time this would have taken me three hours at most. 

I am glad I retired when I did. Every day in the last eleven years has been a picnic. 

To my friends out there who are still working, I would like to say this: 

Retire boss, retire, it's a good life!

My impressions of Chennai

I stayed for a couple of weeks in Chennai when my mom was there. That whole city puts me off.

The autowallahs are nasty of course. The vegetable vendor starts screaming at you ( saavu giraaki is the opening salvo) if you touch the vegetables. 

There is no concept of customer service, or quality. Or even doing a basic job well. And everyone is kind of closed in their mind for anything new. 

The average Darshini in Bangalore serves better food than the popular names in Chennai. Murugan Idli may be an exception but the likes of Veena Stores or Brahmin's cafe will beat even Murugan Idli by miles. 

Had a chai at the airport, kiosk outside saying "Tea something". 100 rupees. One sip and I spat it out. I am not exaggerating when I say that even a beggar in Bombay will refuse to have that tea. 

Construction quality, very poor. Plumber, electrician, they don't even come for days. The concept of dry toilets does not exist. My mom's landlord had not even installed a washbasin, she did it at her own expense. 

I am a tamilian by upbringing and I was totally put off. 

Imagine the plight of a North Indian who doesn't know Tamil landing there.

Post match media interaction

These post match reminiscences are so boring. 

Oh, I am so excited to be out here today ( once the Americans came on the scene this word has lost all its meaning. Being excited all the time and nothing else merely indicates a poor vocabulary) 

The boys really played well ( always give credit to the boys. This cricketer was so used to this phrase that he said that when someone congratulated him on his child being born) 

I thought let's bat and put some runs on the board, that was the need of the hour ( ya sure, that's what you do in cricket) 

The first ten overs were crucial. So were the last ten. And the middle 30  overs were very critical ( I am waiting for the day when someone says these ten overs were not critical) 

The dew being what it is, and with the lights coming on, it could aid swing... 

The pitch was firm though without grass, and we thought it would start crumbling towards the end and aid our spinners.. 

( All this is pure mumbo jumbo designed to keep the non serious follower out of the conversation. Don't worry even they don't know what they are talking about) 

And the newbie...   I am grateful to Rohit Sharma for encouraging me, he is a great mentor ( smart chap, he knows whom to butter up ) 

I just went out there and played my game ( well obviously you nitwit, whatever you do you have to play your game) 

And so on and so on. 

Post match interviews are definitely not grist for the intellectual mill, and they tend to be boring, repetitive, full of stock phrases, in short they sound like a bunch of teenagers talking. 

Which is to be expected. We selected our cricketers because they are good at playing cricket, not for their intellect, vocabulary and general knowledge. 

What I don't understand is, why then do we insist on repeatedly asking for their insights and waste our time listening to them or reading their Gyan.

About blood thinners and their ilk

Link to an article in today's  TOI : 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/breakthrough-common-blood-thinner-can-be-affordable-antidote-for-cobra-venom/amp_articleshow/111817389.cms

👆"repurposing existing drug" for a hitherto unknown use. 

Sounds great. And it is. 

But think about it slightly differently. Blood thinners are prescribed like chocolates nowadays. Anyone and everyone you know is having blood thinners. 

They are effective as anti venom also, as it was just discovered, "they act as a decoy antidote, binding and neutralising the toxins" 

The question to ask is.. all those  lifestyle drugs that  you are you taking, from the pill box that you carry around.. how many of them act as decoys to bind to what all and create what all havoc in the body? 

And remember that  it all started when you went for that "preventive" medical check up, which is basically a trap for enticing the gullible into the medical system's welcoming arms.

100 tests, at sixty percent discount! 

When you test for 100 parameters, there is a close to 100 percent chance that some parameter is "not normal". How is normal defined? Anything, say five percent to the right or five percent to the left of the normal distribution consisting of the population. 100 parameters like that, and the chance of getting a clean report is close to infinitesimal, do the math yourself. 

So your LDL was low and HDL was high, or Vitamin D3 was inadequate, and you landed at the local corporate hospital ( the discounted tests are decoys, they are actually marketing agents for the corporate hospitals, the front line goons for the medical mafia).

And before you know it, you are on statins, blood thinners, cholesterol lowering drugs..  

In roughly around five years from that point you are carrying around a pill box with compartments with dates and times filled with pills of various colours. And you are saying things like "I need to eat every two hours or I will die", "I cannot sit on a two wheeler, God forbid, my back will dislocate itself", "I am gluten, lactose and peanut intolerant"... We are all familiar with the list, except that in the last few years the list is growing. 

Meanwhile the neighbour, who is a trader  in  Chikpet, and  seventy five years old, continues to travel all around the city on his Kinetic Honda, eat 

anything, go anywhere, life weights, spend ten hours at his shop, and is mentally and physically active. 

What is the secret to his  good health? 

His ignorance. No one told him about medical tests.

The Circus comes to town

The teams are equally matched, 

The margins of victory slender; 

The game veers this way and that, 

And then goes one way or the other! 

But yet we pin our hopes too much, 

On slender momentary wins; 

The fights and wins we lack in our lives, 

We seek vicariously in them! 

Too much elation on victory, 

End of the world on a defeat; 

This too shall pass; and once again, 

One turn into the other! 

Our self esteem has been outsourced,

To fickle momentary events; 

To gladiators in a Circus,

Paid to fight and die for us! 

So much of me has been invested,

On someone, somewhere, outside control; 

Like those rides in a carnival, 

I am screaming, passive, and belted! 

And then I totter to the next; 

One draining ride after another; 

One day wonder where all the days went, 

I'm spent, with nothing to show for them!