The Hug!

We had a visitor for lunch today. She is very special to me as are her husband and two delightful children. While the husband is not demonstrative, the three others share hugs with me whenever we meet and today was no exception. Before she left, I was given a hug and I started reminiscing about this phenomenon and what a grand way it is to express love for someone.

On those mornings when our paths cross, by which I mean, that I am not already on my newspaper reading and crossword puzzle solving mode, Ranjan always greets me with a bear hug and a cheery good morning. That sets the tone for the rest of the day and on some days when I am on my recliner, I am surprised by Manjiree with a hug and a kiss on my bald top. She usually does this quietly and sneaks up from behind while I am reading something. The surprise is very welcome indeed.

A coupe of others too sneak up from behind when I am reading and play “guess who” by covering my eyes and that too is a very pleasant interlude to otherwise placid times.  One, recently did that and I simply could not guess because,  she was based in a city in another state and I was not expecting her to come to Pune at all.  It was another instance of an event that I will always cherish.

There are others who give me hugs, particularly family members and some young friends who visit Rajan and Manjiree who are fond of me. I always enjoy these hugs.

Reminiscing about the phenomenon of hugs, I remembered this rather old clip and with some difficulty was able to locate it in YouTube. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did when I first saw it many years ago and again earlier today when I found it.

Castles In The Air.

A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent.
~ Jerome Lawrence

I somehow never built castles in the air. It is said that a man’s home is his castle and even that home that I bought was due to an unplanned for development. I have not however, regretted the purchase and in fact, it is indeed my castle.

I also flatter myself that I am neither a neurotic nor,  psychotic.  I neither pay or collect rent and so I am not qualified to be a psychiatrist. I however did consult a psychiatrist a couple of years ago for a spell of clinical depression but, I don’t think that the experience is relevant to this discussion.

So, what am I?  Just a lucky old geezer!  Grateful to have had his feet firmly on the ground all his life.

How about you dear reader?  Have you built castles in the air?

Healthcare – A Right Or A Privilege?

This Friday’s 2 on 1 blog post’s topic has been chosen by Shackman. I am sure that the recent spurt of anti Obama Care developments in the USA must have weighed heavily on his mind when he chose the topic. Being an Indian, I am concerned with what happens in India where we have a long way to go to extend full health care benefits and I use every platform to propagate my views which are not original but, practical any way.

Regular readers of my blog posts know that one of the credos by which I communicate is “Why reinvent the wheel?” My politics and economics is conditioned by A F Hayek. I would simply quote him from two sources to buttress my view that Health Care Is A Right that should be given to every human being.

“All modern governments have made provision for the indigent, unfortunate, and disabled and have concerned themselves with questions of health and the dissemination of knowledge. … There are common needs that can be satisfied only by collective action and which can be thus provided for without restricting individual liberty. It can hardly be denied that, as we grow richer, that minimum of sustenance which the community has always provided for those not able to look after themselves, and which can be provided outside the market, will gradually rise, or that government may, usefully and without doing any harm, assist or even lead in such endeavours. There is little reason why the government should not also play some role, or even take the initiative, in such areas as social insurance and education, or temporarily subsidise certain experimental developments.”
(The Constitution of Liberty of 1960 Pages 257 and 258.)

“There is no reason why in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained [NW note: Hayek was writing not in prosperous post-war America, but in war-torn, austerity-ridden Britain in 1943] the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom. …. [T]here can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody. … Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individual in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision.
“Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance – where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks – the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong. There are many points of detail where those wishing to preserve the competitive system and those wishing to super-cede it by something different will disagree on the details of such schemes; and it is possible under the name of social insurance to introduce measures which tend to make competition more or less ineffective. But there is no incompatability in principle between the state’s providing greater security in this way and the preservation of individual freedom.
“To the same category belongs also the increase of security through the state’s rendering assistance to the victims of such ‘acts of God’ as earthquakes and floods. Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken.
“There is, finally, the supremely important problem of combating general fluctuations of economic activity and the recurrent waves of large-scale unemployment which accompany them. This is, of course, one of the gravest and most pressing problems of our time. But, though its solution will require much planning in the good sense, it does not — or at least need not — require that special kind of planning which according to its advocates is to replace the market.

“Many economists hope, indeed, that the ultimate remedy may be found in the field of monetary policy, which would involve nothing incompatible even with nineteenth-century liberalism. Others, it is true, believe that real success can be expected only from the skillful timing of public works undertaken on a very large scale. This might lead to much more serious restrictions of the competitive sphere, and, in experimenting in this direction, we shall have to carefully watch our step if we are to avoid making all economic activity progressively more dependent on the direction and volume of government expenditure. But this is neither the only nor, in my opinion, the most promising way of meeting the gravest threat to economic security.

“In any case, the very necessary effort to secure protection against these fluctuations do not lead to the kind of planning which constitutes such a threat to our freedom.”
(The Road to Serfdom, Pages 148-149)

Please go over to Shackman’s blog to see what he has to say on the subject. Thank you.

Waking Hours.

“The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours. In this existential sense, the function of all social living is to lend mutual assistance to this project.”

~ Eric Berne.

A classmate of mine who was in his own business till age finally caught up with him handed over the business to his son and retired some six months ago. He however kept going to the office till his son finally told him to either stop or take the management back from him. He finally stopped going to work and came to find out from me how I manage to pass my time in retirement.

Yakob has been part of my family’s life since December 1990 when he came in as our gardener and handy man.   Yakob was working as a peon in an establishment near our home and his employment with us was for before office hours.

Yakob hit the age of sixty by the end of February this year and had to retire from his position from the establishment where he was working.  Since then, he has visibly deteriorated from a cheerful and happy go lucky fellow to a listless and cheerless individual.  No amount of my trying to cheer him up helps.

Both these cases are typical of many retired people who do not know what to do with themselves during their waking hours.

To the former, I explained how I occupy myself with so many things that I find little time to do other non routine things. He just could not understand how I could read so much, solve crossword puzzles, blog, WhatsApp and so on as he never had the time to develop such or other interests during his working days. He left as disheartened as he was when he came in.

To the latter, I am trying to find some re-employment through other friends and hope to find something soon.

Retirement can be brutal if one had not developed some interests other than career related ones while still working.

Visiting Parents.

In my extended family of siblings and cousins both maternal and paternal, I am one of the rare ones who lives with his offspring. Something that was unthinkable during my parents’s time and well into my adulthood as well. Both my parents stayed with their children during their retirement stage and died while resident with one of the children. Today, if I look at my immediate family, none of my nephews and nieces stay with parents and the parents one of whom is single, live separately.

While this is increasingly getting to be the norm here, there are constant messages on WhatsApp and facebook about the necessity for the grown up children to spend time with their parents. This is one such video showing an adult male going to visit his widowed mother. The language is Malayalam, spoken in our Southern state of Kerala. There are no subtitles but, the story line is easy to follow despite that. Pulls all the right strings! I regret that I am unable to give credit to the maker/s of the film as I am unable to find details.

A Student Even Now.

I was ready. Two teachers appeared today in my life.

The thrill of learning something new is an amazing feeling. I keep getting this feeling often, particularly when learning new things from younger people.

Two young teachers appeared for me today.

First one was RH, an old colleague from the late nineties of the last century. I had written about him in my post The Right Question.

He sent me a WhatsApp message on our current political situation. I thought that it deserved a wider circulation and so tried to copy paste it and tweet it.

I have had a Twitter account now for quite a while though I am not very active in it. I have recently been inspired to use it by some other friends who use it more. I am still finding my way around the application and so found it puzzling when my copy pasted message would not be accepted by Twitter. The tweet button remained inactive no matter how many times I tried.

Enter my second teacher KS. I have mentioned him too many times in my blog posts to give a single link. Suffice it to say that, he is one of the few young people from whom I learn a great deal on many matters. He is a fellow alumnus from the same Business School that I am from and that is our connection. He is also a regular tweeter.

I sought his advice on why my copy paste was getting rejected and sent him a screen shot of the inactive tweet button. He promptly responded saying that there was a -151 message in the frame which meant that I had 151 characters more than the Twitter application allowed per tweet. I had seen the alert but did not understand the significance till KS explained it to me and advised me to either cut the message short or tweet it in two or three instalments.

And Bingo, it worked.

I do sincerely hope that I don’t get truly ready any time too soon and that these two teachers do not disappear from my life.