Dear friends,
I was quite redeemed to see that not only did the writeup on Lease & License get a good response, but also the one on punctuations was quite a hit as well.
Shubha Prasad from Mysuru and Shahji, my fellow Mason, wanted to know the rationale behind deposits and lock-in periods. Well, interest-free deposits are primarily taken as security deposits to offset any non-payment of rent or for restoring the premises to its near original condition. Deposits also play a role in determining the rent. The norm is ‘higher the deposit, lower the rent’. In the case of license, the word rent is substituted by ‘monthly fee’ or ‘monthly compensation’. Less often, we get to see some owners accepting a deposit and an advance adjustable against the rent. For example, when the owner agrees to undertake some alteration or renovation that the tenant wants so long as the tenant funds the cost by giving him an advance to be offset against the rent over a few months.
A lock-in period is commonly seen in both leases and licences. Typically, the lock-in period for an 11-month lease is six months, and to ensure that this is honoured, the owner takes a deposit equal to six months rent. If the lease is for 3 years, typically the lock-in period is 12 to 18 months with a corresponding deposit.
Please feel free to write to me offline if you would like further clarification.
Tara, our dear family friend, again from Mysuru, said she loved the punctuation part of 🔗 FC 35 and she mentioned another line ‘hang him not leave him’ where the comma in the wrong place could be fatal.
On the same track, Shahji recommends a book, ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation’ by Lynne Truss (available in paperback edition on Amazon).
Lastly, my friend Murali has sent this line asking you to add punctuation to make sense out of it:
is is not not not is not is is is is not is not is it not
Please post your answer in the comments, I’m looking forward to it!
🙏🏽 Forgive and Forget
These two words when they are used separately seem to pose no challenge as opposed to the complexities they pose when used in conjunction.
“Oh! I forgot!” is a common refrain of husbands (including me😄). My wife sometimes tells me to do something or bring something, and when I say I forgot, I get an “I-give-up” look from her. But it is not the same if I forgot our anniversary or her birthday (she is not so concerned if I forgot Valentine’s day). If I did forget those two ‘auspicious’ dates (I say auspicious because they are good for me), she is not going to forget and I am not going to be forgiven easily.
Can you both forgive and forget? Can you forget that the boss yelled at you in front of all your colleagues? Can you forgive him after a couple of days when he calls you into his chamber and says “Hi, I called to say how sorry I am to have spoken to you like that. I don’t know what got the better of me.” You say with lack of conviction or sincerity, those empty words, “It’s ok sir” and walk out.
You get to your workstation and feel the eyes of your colleagues on you. You get paranoid. You begin to think that they are wondering if you got another dressing down from your boss. You want to stand up and tell all of them what exactly happened. You are even tempted to tell them that the boss apologised. But you hesitate because you don’t consider ‘sorry’ as an ‘apology’. You are in no mood to forgive the boss. Come April, increments and promotions are due. Either of two things can happen. You get a rating and increment that confirms your suspicion that the boss continues to have a low opinion of you OR you get a good rating and an increment that exceeds your expectation.
In the first scenario, your bitter feelings about the boss hit a new low and in the second scenario, you begin to classify the ‘sorry’ as an ‘apology’ and rise above that ill-feeling you had about him. You are inclined to forgive the boss and forget the incident of your own volition incentivised by the increment and the rating which you think is an expression of his objectivity.
It takes a lot of good reasoning, maturity and magnanimity to forgive someone for what they did to you. But the incident or what was said is seldom forgotten. Time will heal the mind and you may be able to not give the matter more thought. Yet, it lurks in the recess of your mind and something or someone may remind you of that incident or words.
One of the ways to forget and forgive is to avoid internalising or discussing with someone who might reinforce your own conclusions about someone or misgivings about something done to you. Rationalising or externalising the feelings help you gravitate towards forgiveness and perhaps, in due course, help you forget. In such a situation you really haven’t forgotten, but you have put the matter in perspective and remember it as a learning or experience in life. The bitterness that you experienced is neutralised by questioning yourself —“what would I have done if I were in their situation?”
There are certain situations, actions or utterances that are difficult to forgive let alone forget.
Making, in public, personal comments, body-shaming, insulting the modesty of a person and ridiculing someone can cause a lot of hurt and distress.
Not being able to forget is to punish yourself by living and re-living the incident or experience.
You need to tell yourself that the person cannot have control over your mind. One cannot harbour impotent anger which essentially means planning a retribution that one is incapable of achieving. Revenge is often believed to be a recompense to what someone did to you. That makes you think of the incident and agonise over your inability to do anything about it. Harbouring ill-feeling clouds your judgement and it festers in your mind.
“To err is human but to forgive is divine” — attributed to Alexander Pope — is oft-quoted whenever something has gone wrong or someone has made a mistake. I think this quote will resonate differently if you changed it to — “To err is human but to forgive and forget is divine”.
An error is an unintended outcome of human action. It would be an offence if it was done knowing the consequences or if the consequences were in fact intended. Under law, it could either be a civil wrong (tort) or a crime. That’s one reason why I feel that one could easily forgive an error but not a wrong or a crime that can be actionable. There are errors of judgement that can pass the test of forgiveness but errors that transform to blunders on account of negligence can have dire consequences.
So, an error can be forgiven but usually not forgotten as it is stored as a reminder both in the mind of the errant and the sufferer. You may have heard people saying ‘don't make the same mistake you did the last time’ or ‘I don’t want to make the same mistake I did the last time.’
Making the same mistake can be characterized as negligence, as it was committed despite knowing the consequence. That is unlikely to be forgiven.
Dear readers, I am sure each one of you has your own experiences having forgiven or having been forgiven, and all I say is forget what you forgave but don’t forget the one who forgave you.
😂 On a lighter note
Forgive & Forget? I am neither the Pope nor do I have amnesia!
“Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.” —Marlene Dietrich, actress.
The first to apologise is the bravest, the first to forgive is the strongest and the first to forget is the happiest. (So, be brave, strong and happy!)
“Always forgive your enemies but don’t forget their names” - J F Kennedy
“Forget what you did, forgive yourself and begin afresh”
Be safe. Get vaccinated. You will never forgive yourself if you forget!
we forget and forgive every five years ... :)
Thank you for you clarification on the leave and license. I still have some doubts which I shall try and clear between ourselves individually. The punctuation exercise given of “is is not not not is not is is is is not is not is it not” looks more like a tongue twister! I think I got the beginning and the end, but got stranded on the in between part. “Is, is not, not. ------ .Is it not?”. Am I right there?
I like the statement of yours “The first to apologise is the bravest, the first to forgive is the strongest and the first to forget is the happiest. (So, be brave, strong and happy!)”. However, I must state that personally I feel that it is easier to forgive someone than to forget. All you need to do is to ignore the snub or whatever that is dished out, but forgetting is easier said than done.
Come to think of it, it’s all about you and how you view the event. If you care for yourselves, it’s best to forgive someone by not getting offended and spoiling your own mood etc. You thus avoid hurt to yourselves. You could and should proceed as if nothing has happened between you and that person (unless it gets repeated too often and becomes a thorn in the relationship) but forgetting is difficult. It is bound to come back to you, if not then, on a later occasion especially if it happens again. As the say, once may be a happenstance and twice could be coincidence but anything more must be enemy action. It all depends, finally, on the relationship you would want to have with that person.
While on the subject of forgiving and forgetting we must remember that regret and revenge is not far behind. Unless we can truly forgive and forget without regret and revenge it will ultimately hurt ourselves as well as the relationship. The statement that you made of forgetting what you forgave and of not forgetting the one who forgave you is certainly the best way forward though difficult it may be.