Figure the Finances for a Fragile Life

Death seldom comes as good news unless it is a pest in your house and by pests I purely mean lizards, cockroaches or rats. Death can be an even more painful event if it is that of a near or a dear one. And it can get gruesomely painful to know that the one deceased had yet years to live by, responsibilities to fulfil, a life to envisage and decades yet to give. Today, I have witnessed one such heart breaking events of my life.

Sonu was 37 years old, healthy, smart, handsome, intelligent, successful, happily married, a blessed father and a dutiful son. I say this without exaggeration. He drowned yesterday to an untimely death. He was devoured by the swimming pool where he was playing with his son.  The family is desolate of course. He leaves behind two boys and the wife completely clueless about how to handle this thing called Life from hereon. Sonu did everything. He made the money, he saved the money, he invested it and he spent it. He planned the vacations; he planned the parties and much more. I do not mean to disregard the wife’s contribution but he was in charge of the ‘monies’ saved or spent. What happens now that Sonu is not around? After all he may have budgeted for many a things but death was not what he budgeted for. Well, Not Yet!!

So, after all the gloom settles down and when Sonu becomes only a memory, memory of all the past times, What next??? As they say, the Show Must Go On. Picture Abhi Baaki Hai Mere Dost. Sadly, memories do not buy you ration, fondness or love does not pay the school fees, tears may wash away some of your pain but they will never wash away the hardships of life. Those, have to be faced up close. I hate to break this to anyone who has any doubts but Money still remains the most sought after commodity on this planet only after oxygen that is. Thankfully, Oxygen is free but Money does not yet grow on trees.

So, if you haven’t done it yet, make a checklist today and ensure a few pointers:

• Does your spouse (be it the husband or the wife) know where are all the papers related to your bank accounts, investments, tax returns, etc are? I personally maintain one hardcopy of each investment made and store it in a folder. This folder contains all our investments be it mutual funds, insurance or the land deal I made with Robert Vadra (Yes! Don’t under estimate the power of Yamini Sood)
  
  
• Do you have life insurance? And by that I mean term insurance. U better have it unless you have been told by a Nadi astrologer that you will live till 80. And if you have believed that enough to ignore insurance, you may also want to believe that you can still wear diapers under your pants and look cool.
  
  
• We live in an e-world with most things online. Collate all such money related information, passwords as per your convenience and share the location with your better half.
  
  
• Demat Accounts, Mutual Funds have the wonderful option of Nomination. Ensure that your spouse has been nominated under all your investments. Putting your spouse’s name as the second holder in the bank account is not just wise but also very convenient for all the extra ordinary times when you may not be physically around (travel, etc) while some bank work needs to be attended to.   
  
• Let your spouse know about your monthly liabilities, EMIS, utility bills. Chances are he/ she may already be aware but its better if you are not trying to be a super man/super woman keeping all the thorns to yourself and showing your spouse that life is a bed of roses.
  
  
• If you have a huge housing loan, it is advisable to have a home insurance too. You may be paying your EMI diligently and may have plans to pre pay the loan soon but there is something known as contingency planning. Devil lies sometimes in detail and sometimes in unserviceable EMIs
  
  
• Be prepared for the unexpected. I am not saying be prepared to die. But, if ur Karma is not a bitch, your organisation may choose to be so. Be prepared to lose your job, face a large unanticipated medical calamity or worst of all you may decide to produce ‘Prem Ratan Dhan Paayo’ and go bust (I have advance sympathies for Rajshree Productions)
  
  
•  Above all, try to spend less and save more. Save first and then spend the remaining. Learn about investing. You can start with many You Tube videos if reading blogs or opinion pages sounds scarier than watching a Kamal R Khan movie.
  
  
  Disclaimer: This post is targeted at the young and working in their late thirties or early forties. Not that this piece of advice will not apply to those who have just started or are towards the fag end of their careers. But, their financial checklist would include or exclude a few more items which I haven’t included in this post to keep it short, simple and bitterly sweet. {Psssst.. Also, I am too lazy to write}

  

Forgotten Feminism

I have been contemplating writing my thoughts on this topic for some time now. If you count an approximation of 3 years as ‘some time’ then yes, sometime it is. And then Vogue happened along with Deepika Padukone , Homi Adjania & 98 other women who seem to be advertising for a black Dove soap in a grey cover.  The last, much needed push came from yesterday’s conversation with a friend who was dumbfounded on hearing my thoughts and took many of his hats off during our conversation.  By the end of it I had collected a bagful of virtual hats from him. Now to the piece, lest I loose my thoughts to laziness one more time.

I looked up the actual meaning of ‘Feminism’ in Wikipedia. Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women. Right to vote, equal pay, equal work opportunities, education, enter contracts, respect for her body, to own property et cetera. These seem absolutely fine to me.

The problem lies in the warped meaning it has achieved over years.  Since when did equal rights become the right to offend men, right to look down upon housework, right to procrastinate pregnancy for your own ambitious needs even when your partner desires a child, right to derogatorily talk about other women as “O, she is just a housewife!” Well…sex outside marriage is also a right which if she needs, so be it. But be prepared to lose the right to complain when he has it tomorrow.  Aren’t we talking equal rights here?

We have to accept that nature has made man the provider. He was always the hunter. The one who went out to fetch, the one who fended for his people, the one who increased the tribe and trained it; to protect from predators galore. The promiscuity of men has roots in this fact too (where he was always in search of healthy and fertile partner who could give birth to more children and raise them for him) but will need another write-up though. Not that the women have ever been immune from promiscuous behaviour in the past. But in a sample size men have far outdone their fairer counterparts and thus happily take the blame. Nature also made woman the nurturer, the care-giver. The one, who gave life, nurtured the life, imparted values. The basic roles haven’t changed much even today but we the women seem to have a problem. Oh! The confused feministic streak.

I happened to attend a sports event and an annual event in my kids’ school last year. There is something eternally graceful about a woman’s curvaceous body when it moves to the beat of rhythm and music to produce some enthralling dance moves. In athletics, there was a 100 metre race of girls and then boys apart from many other races. But the sheer energy exuded by the boys when they ran, the crisp and well sculpted legs and hand coordination, the intensity on the face of those 15 year old boys far outdid the pleasure to see the girls running. At the risk of sounding misogynistic or backward, I have to admit that these are some genetical pleasures of a woman dancing or a man running carried on era after era which can get modified but not eliminated.

Coming back to My Choice! On a good day it is eating potato chips along with a captivating book and to be left alone in a room. But then my choice will be made into a book not a small article which only I will buy. India has a vast population of under privileged women out there in urban cities, small towns and villages who do not have a choice but to work for a paltry amount of cash, come back and cook, run the other errands around their house, take care of the child and do much more as many of them probably have a man who lurks around a desi-daru shop & beats her black and blue when she refuses to entertain his whims for some moolah or sex. She is the real super woman who goes unnoticed, uncredited, unsung and completely unaware of the choices Vogue thinks are important like putting a surname after her name along with the hallowed red bindi.
   

Being a woman is such a privilege. Isn’t it a matter of pride to be able to nurture life firstly inside your womb and then outside it for the rest of the child’s life? Isn’t it love which you serve along with the food on the plate? The emotions and energy spent while cooking by a woman of the house, impacts the mental consciousness of the one who eats it. Hence there is a word like ‘ghar ka khaana’ and outside food. With cooks in many a modern households doing the needful what else can we expect but a generation full of apathetic youngsters.

Aspirations, independence, being able are all very good, to support your family or plain yourself financially even better but the audacity to look down, to defy the ability that nature has given her is when I have a problem. It is good to say “you don’t own me” to your man but then so don’t you. This, in your face bluntness or aggression is the kind of feminism which scares me. Womanhood is about sharing, caring, adjusting and nurturing. We need to be proud of this fact, not ashamed of it. There is merit to the statement when Indra Nooyi or Anne Marie Slaughter said that “Women can’t have it all”. The trouble is when she seeks it all. She should remember that if she can’t, so also the men can’t have it all. He can’t wear pink pants or go on a devilish mode citing ‘those days of the month’ as a reason. On a serious note, he can facilitate but not bear life. Only a woman is capable of binding a house which can never be a man thing. She should revel in the glory of what she has, the prime quality of being a nurturer and a care-giver.  Being a provider is secondary for her and will always remain so. She may like it or hate it. Just like being a provider/ protector will always remain primary for a man. Isn’t it a fact that when it comes to choosing a partner, be it for a live-in relationship or a marriage, however successful a woman might be she almost always seeks a man more successful than her? Why? Think.

Walking with the man and his family not ahead of him or behind him is true feminism.