Filter Coffee #031
On Balance, and Replying to Readers' Comments
Dear Friends,
Thank you for all of your enthusiastic responses. There were many very good comments, suggestions and questions over the past months that I enjoyed reading and responding to. I am delighted to tell you that with your active involvement, my readership base is now 1006! Thank you for making this happen, and please continue to share this newsletter with anyone that you think would appreciate it.
After reading 🔗 FC #30, a long-married person, who I know well, has asked me:
“Love Marriage... is it a game of chance or of luck or of skill?”
I am not sure how many would consider love marriage a skill. I surmise that skill plays a role after the marriage. Do I need to say more? Chance is just an occurrence, but luck is how that chance plays out. You chance upon a mugger and you may be unlucky to lose your wallet but lucky to get away alive. You chance upon and buy a painting in the flea market which you liked and later it turns out to be that of a famous painter — that’s luck.
As for love marriage being a game of chance or luck, my take is that you may meet a girl by chance but it goes no further than your saying hello to her. But if you chat and meet her often then it is possible you may fall in love, and luckily for you, she might reciprocate. So, I think the chance of meeting a girl precedes the luck of marrying her. That’s why ‘Luck by Chance’ is the title of FC # 30.
My friend Murali asked me why I did not make the historic cricket victory the topic of FC #30. Two reasons for not doing that. One, all of you may have already seen it live or read detailed descriptions of those winning moments. But more important is the fact that my technical knowledge of the game is confined to gully cricket and I have no idea where gully is on the cricket field. But I like to watch the game and ‘whistle podu’ when Vadhyar hits a six.
When I was working with Brooke Bond, we formed two teams and played cricket on the RSI grounds. I was supposed to keep score but they made me a fielder near the fence. I remember our sales manager Jayachandran batting and when he lofted the ball towards where I was placed as a fielder I could see the ball coming towards me but it went through my hands which were positioned like a funnel. I missed the chance of catching much to Jai’s luck. I think my other colleague Shishir Lall was the bowler and he wasn't too pleased that I let the ball slip through my hands to the fence for a four!
I must confess to being a poor loser. If my wife catches me switching off the TV when the cricket match is still on she asks, “Why, India is losing eh?" I confess I missed watching the winning moments precisely for this reason. I couldn’t bear to see India losing. I was told there was a fair amount of sledging by the Aussies. I am reminded of one such sledging incident: After beating Robin Smith of England with a beauty, the Aussies fast bowler Merv Hughes, the master of sledging, said: “If you turn the bat over, you’ll see the instructions on the back!”
Another avid reader of FC, Shahji doubted if ‘up the creek without a paddle’ involved luck at all. He thought it just meant a bad situation. I had mentioned in FC #30 that it could mean either a ‘bad or unlucky situation’. Imagine, one evening you are driving up a hill and the engine fails. You are in a bad situation and that could become unlucky as well if the breakdown happened where you had no cell phone signal.
It is an interesting coincidence that FC# 31 is falling due on 31st January. People who fancy numerology may consider this as a convergence of identical numbers that bodes well for FC. I don’t mind that at all!
⚖️ Life is a Balancing Act
You might find this an all too familiar phrase. It is often said that life is like a tightrope walk. You cannot afford to make a wrong step or lean too far to one side. Both can have undesirable consequences.
Tightrope walking as an adventure sport is an extremely dangerous act and when it is done without harness or ground support, life literally hangs on a thread like a puppet on a string. History has witnessed some nail-biting tightrope walks some of which are to be found in the Guinness Book of Records.
Notable among all tightrope walkers is the Wallenda family, which goes back to 1780 and has its roots in Austria-Hungary. The family travelled as a band of acrobats, aerialists, jugglers, animal trainers and trapeze artists. The most daring of them all was Karl Wallenda, who performed numerous nerve-racking walks but fell to his death while doing a tight rope walk in 1978 between two towers in Puerto Rico, at the age of 73. His grandson Nick Wallenda became the first person to walk on a tightrope across the roaring Niagara falls separating the U.S. and Canada. If you wish to see that daring spectacle please watch the video below.
In life one often walks a tightrope or performs a balancing act. Is there a difference between the two? Many would think not. The logic being you cannot do a tightrope walk without the balancing pole which helps the walker maintain his balance. So tight rope walking is in itself a balancing act.
However, I venture to differentiate the two. I invite my readers to offer their views on what I am about to say. When you walk a tightrope, you are in a situation where both sides are equally bad situations. Whether you lean to the left or the right, you could find yourself teetering, and even falling. In contrast, in real life, balancing act could mean striking a balance between two competing situations or demands and finding a solution that helps you to deal with both situations.
I have heard someone say that he is walking a tightrope as he has to perform his daughter’s marriage and also be able to pay a donation for his son’s medical seat. Money here is the balance pole. He may not be able to defer either of them but he has to find ways to bridge the gap.
When I started my career in Mumbai my commute to the office involved changing of two buses and two trains, not to mention the walk from the bus stop to and from the residence. I was quite miserable, to begin with, but I was clear I needed the job as a springboard for my future in Mumbai. I endured waking up at 5 am, and my wife too got up to keep my lunch box ready by 6 am. I left the house at 6.15 for a 15-minute walk on a rather garbage ridden road which became unbearable during monsoon. I would get into the same 6.40 am bus each day, see unsmiling familiar faces and reach Malad station by 7 am to catch the train backwards to Borivali to make sure I get a seat and travel by the same train at 7.20 from Borivali to Churchgate. By the time I got to the office, I used to feel the need to have another bath, though I had travelled on a season ticket by first class where the quality was said to be better. Leaving the office at 5.30 pm and getting back home by 8 pm was another experience. I remember how people used to queue up to the punching machine by 5.25 and run to catch the train. I learnt the tricks of the trade and began my balancing act of keeping a job and managing the commute.
Balancing the expectations of your children, your wife, your parents can be very daunting. It is not the money. It is the demand each one of them has, on your time. My wife and millions of other homemakers have this great challenge of balancing the budget. There are some cases where the husband wants to retain control of the purse but they are an exception. One can think of hiring a cook, a maid, a driver and a gardener too. But even if you are earning a fair amount, the ability to spend so much on domestic staff leaves you wondering about savings.
My wife dislikes credit cards. They make her feel indebted. She uses debit cards. I continue to use credit cards and don’t like using the debit card. When she questions me I say, “This is a cash balancing act: you prefer spot payment and I prefer deferred payment.” She retorts: “You are off your balance. How can you call it balancing when you run up debts on the back of a credit card?!”
There are many other aspects of balancing, like balancing mathematical equations and chemical equations. I am not getting into them as I don’t have a working equation with them. Bad in both subjects. Oh, yes! Once I told someone a joke about chemistry but there was no reaction!
Dear Readers, the topic of balancing has many aspects, some of which I will discuss another time. But please feel free to share your experiences. See you next week, and until then stay safe, stay healthy, and don’t forget to wear your mask!
Congratulations on crossing 1,000 readers, Pras!
I believe one of the biggest balancing acts one has to do as a married man is keeping both the wife and the mother happy!!
Fortunately or unfortunately I had the pleasure or displeasure of doing this for just a little shy of 20 years!! Not sure how many would even venture into one of the most complicated relationships that one has to nurture in a lifetime. Almost 90% break up as soon as they get married to avoid handling 2 women with diagonally opposite likes and dislikes but yet 2 women who have the biggest bearing in your life!!
On the other topic as a banking professional I can tell you that a credit card is an extremely powerful weapon as long as it is used wisely and appropriately. No other financial instrument gives you interest free money for almost 50 days. The trick is to spend our swipe as soon as the previous months bill is generated. What's more you get loads of reward points for just going through your usual expenditure which can be exchanged for vouchers or air miles. The trick again is to pay off whatever is outstanding in full as credit card companies charge almost 16% interest rates on balances and that is their way of making money. Remember its not easy for banks to maintain all those partnerships including lounge accesses, airline tie ups, fashion branding and even more. We have many customers called "revolvers" who have multiple credit cards and pay off the balances of one card with that of the other! It's an art which many of them have almost perfected.
Many congratulating on crossing 1k readers!! Sunday's are really enriching thanks to the FC publications!! Here's to many more readers and many more articles!!