Collateral.

This quote forwarded to me by a friend, reminds me of a story that did the WhatsApp rounds some time ago.

Our Public Sector Banks have been aggressively taking their banking services to rural India and publicising their offers widely.

One day, one weather-beaten farmer comes to a rural banker and asks for a loan to tide over the problems faced by him due to the failure of the monsoon that year.

The snobbish banker asks the farmer what he can offer as collateral and the farmer wants to know the meaning of the word. On being explained the process of taking a loan against a collateral, the farmer says that he has a couple of cows and small plot of agricultural land.

An agreement is reached, the farmer pledges his parcel of land, takes the money and leaves.

He returns much sooner than expected, clears the entire loan amount with interest and takes back the documents of his collateral. The surprised banker asks him how he managed to do that and the farmer says that he invested the loan in getting a pump to take out subterranean water to irrigate his field, successfully planted and sold a crop and has now come back to redeem the documents.

The impressed banker in turn suggests that the farmer deposits the surplus cash with the bank and has to explain all the benefits that the farmer will get out of such deposit.

The farmer looks up at the banker and asks him – “What collateral will you offer?”

The King Uses Commoners’ Toilet.

My readers will remember my writing about my niece Lady Lioness. I was reminded of her again today when I received this clip from a friend who too remembered the blog post.

The movie is taken at Gir National Park and you can hear visiting tourists having a good time watching the Lion coming out of the toilet.

I am told that the guides inevitably inform the visitors to check that there are no lions inside the public toilet before entering them in the Reserve. Quite how they do this is a mystery yet to be solved.

A Strange Day.

A cousin who I am in regular touch with sent me this poem yesterday in WhatsApp.
VOID IN LIFE

The passing-away of
one’s better-half
Leaves a great void
in one’s daily life
Pondering over days
spent together
Appears impossible
to re-live twice
The goodness of life
one had enjoyed
Now appears like a
star in the sky
Can only visualise but
can-not realise
It is fact of Life, one
can summarise
The passing away of
one’s better-half
Leaves a great void
in one’s daily life.

He explained later that it was from a dear friend of his who had recently lost his wife.

Having experienced the loss of my wife I could relate and was mulling over the experience when my door bell rang, unusually by someone ringing it three times.

It spoiled my reverie and I went to open the door fully determined to let whoever it was who had done that a piece of my mind only to find that it was my elderly neighbour. On seeing her, my mood immediately changed and I opened the door to find out what prompted her to come over as, she rarely leaves her home as both she and her husband are not in the pink of health. I had not seen either of them since the outbreak of covid early last year.

She wanted to come inside to meet “Memsahib”. I thought that she wanted to meet my daughter in love and said that she was off at work and will return only late in the evening. She then interrupted me to ask to meet my wife.

I was totally zapped and told her that my wife had died twelve years ago. On hearing this, she broke down and I had to bring her in and make her sit down to recover. I then understood that her illness also included some element of dementia as, she kept talking about things that were ancient.

I had to calm her down, pacify her, talk about other things about our neighbourhood for about fifteen minutes and then escort her back to her home just across a landing from ours.

This was an unusual coincidence and I am still wondering if some kind of message is being sent to me!

What do you, my dear reader, think?

Ironing.

My daughter in love and son are in the process of simplifying their lives and in the process discovered one of my long forgotten travel accessories.
This was perfect for a fussy character like me who could not afford to pay pressing charges in hotels during overseas tours due to severe restrictions on foreign exchange allowed to us those days. Drip dry shirts and polyester blend suits made it easy for washing and ironing one’s own clothes.

Much before that, during my school days, I had got into the habit of ironing my clothes and that habit has continues till today. I still iron my  clothes and enjoy wearing crisply ironed ones every time I go out. I of course use a proper steam iron and an ironing board like this.

I however do not do too many items at a time as I find it difficult to stand for long. Just the two pieces that I will need for the day.

The discovery of the portable iron led me to reminisce about my travelling days as well as my obsession with ironed clothes AND another very impressive quote from a favourite actress.

I don’t think that I am spoiled. What do you think?

Nostalgia 2.

My friend DM who lives in England posted this on his Facebook page:

“We went for a walk this p.m. and were reminiscing…. got to comparing our childhood with “These days”…. We came up with a list of things that were not available to we mere mortals back in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s….
Aubergines
Papayas,
Chinese Gooseberries (now called Kiwi Fruit)
Kumquats
Lychees
(all sorts of things…)
Funny how I can recall the fruit..
So…. what didn’t you have when you were growing up? What was only available in tins (cans)?”

I had responded with:
“The only thing that I remember coming out of a can was a cooking medium called Dalda. Everything else was bought and consumed with hardly anything being stored other than rice, pulses and flour. We did not have refrigerators. So everything perishable was bought at need and used up immediately.”

And DM’s response was simply mindblowing and brought back other memories with which many of my regular readers will connect.

“My parents bought their first ‘fridge in (about) 1958. The mechanism started to leak gas two days after the warranty expired….. other wise we had a stone shelved larder in most of the cottages we lived in.

A lot of foodstuffs were preserved by bottling (canning), beans were salted …. we even salted runner beans in the 1970s when we were first married….other tricks were used… eggs were preserved in isinglass (from sturgeons’ swim bladders) and milk was kept cool buy dint of evaporating water from a cloth covering the bottle or can.
We were never rich enough to afford the land to build an ice house…

 

To reflect back on those days without refrigerators and other modern conveniences has been quite a nostalgic trip. It took me to many other thoughts some of which can be found in this blog post.”