AIDE MEMOIRE

When did I come across the phrase 'aide memoire'? I am not sure.

Perhaps I learnt it at the Alliance Francaise where I had enrolled for a course in French when I was posted in Calcutta during the early days of my career. Or maybe I saw the word printed on the tiny cardboard box containing a corporate gift.

It was a small (6 x 10 cm) leather product which, on one side, had triangular pieces at the four corners to hold slips of paper in, and, on the other, a pocket for the spare slips. Its corners were reinforced with gold-coloured metallic beading and it had a leather loop which accommodated a tiny gold-coloured ballpoint pen.

As and when you remembered something — an item you want to add to the shopping list or a visit due — you pulled it out of your pocket and scrawled on the slip. It doubled as a place where you could "park" information that you may need in future: the phone number of your pharmacist, the arrival time of a train, a new word you learnt.

In course of time, the aide memoire was worn out and had to be discarded, but the habit stuck. A small spiral notebook took its place. You were spoilt for choice: exclusive ones in bond paper from Oxford Stationery in Park Street to the inexpensive ones sold by the hawkers in Esplanade or Dalhousie Square.

In my working days, I used to maintain two such books — one for official matters and the other for personal life. The former would get exhausted six times as fast as the latter, more or less reflecting the proportion of time I spent on the respective spheres of my activity. I would buy a dozen small spiral notebooks and replenish the stocks when they got depleted. On my retirement, the number of notebooks in use at a time was back to one.

One of the side-effects, if I may use the term, of Covid-19 is that replenishment of stocks became a casualty. One went out only if inevitable and returned as soon as the objective of the outing was accomplished "without pottering about in stationery shops" (quoting the strict instructions from the certainly better half).

So one had to make do with slips of paper made at home by cutting A4 sheets into sixteen equal pieces. The trouble with these chits is that they have this nasty habit of getting misplaced or scattered. They fly off the table, get lodged inside magazines and newspapers, or sometimes simply perform the vanishing act!

So much so that when you want to add one more item to the one you wrote on, you can't find it. So you make another, and another, and yet another, of course at different times, ad infinitum and end up with several chits. You write the same thing over and over again on several slips — all of which get lost unless they are used as bookmarks.

These slips are the cause of the intermittent civil wars at home: when I tell my wife that I am unable to locate a particular slip, she complains that she will soon drown in the gadzillion slips floating around. "Use Post-it slips, for heaven's sake! They will at least sit in one place, and not flit about like gadflies in the troposphere," says the significant one. "What's the fun, then?" I respond. In my saner moments, though, I do realise that she has a point: the chits far outnumber the items I have noted on them!

So you decide you will consolidate them all into one and destroy the others. (Remember WWI being described by HG Wells as "the war to end all wars"? Likewise, my fond hope is that this would be a slip to end all slips.) But you can't do that till you can find them all — at the same time, which is never.

PERSONAL FINANCE — SOME INTERESTING NUMBERS

72, 114 and 144:

Doubling of principal: If interest is compounded at quarterly intervals and the rate is r%, it will take approximately 72/r years for the principal to double. For instance, if the rate of interest is 6%, it will take about 12 years; for 9%, it will take about 8 years.

Three times the principal: It will take about 114/r years for the principal to grow three-fold.

(How have these been worked out? Suffice it to know that binomial theorem has been applied.)

Four times the principal: It will take about 144/r years for the principal to grow four times. [Edit: Given the above rule of 72, nothing earthshaking there, I discover now!]

70

Assuming the rate of inflation to be r%, the purchasing power of your corpus will be reduced to half in approximately 70/r years. (That is, if you do not touch it. If you withdraw, the doomsday is closer.)

25

If your present annual expenses are x, you need a corpus of 25x so that assuming a return of 6.5% and inflation rate of 8%, my excel sheet says, the entire corpus will be wiped out in less than 22 years. The corpus will stretch for a few more years with a lower inflation rate.

100 minus age

The ideal percentage of equity in your financial assets is around 100 — age. As one grows up, the percentage should decline.

20-50-30 rule

While at least 20% of your income should be saved, about 50% can be allocated for your needs and about 30% for wants. The proportion of savings can go up, but not down.

4

You should have an emergency fund of four times your monthly income to cover unforeseen eventualities.

40

Your EMIs should not exceed 40% of your gross monthly income after income tax.

0

After every credit card bill is paid, the amount due for the previous billing period should always be 0. Ignore the "minimum due" printed on the bill; it is a trap.

FAMILIARITY BREEDS "COULDN'T-CARE-LESS-NESS"

I am sitting in the waiting area adjoining an operation theatre where my wife is to undergo a cataract surgery. There are perhaps twenty surgeries scheduled for the forenoon. The patients and the 'bystanders' — in most cases the respective spouses — are all seated on the cushioned sofas. (It beats me why this blessed word — which means a 'mere, passive, onlooker' — is used for referring to someone who is supposed to be at the beck and call of the patient, the doctor, the nurse, the ward boy and the cashier, but let that pass.)

Presently, a nurse appears and announces the names of four patients — all women. She beckons them to follow her to the theatre. They get up, nod to the respective 'bystander' and proceed.

Ten minutes later, the nurse returns with four identical bags and hands over them to the four 'bystanders' of the patients now in the theatre. "It is the clothes of the patients," she explains. The hospital has thoughtfully provided uniforms to the patients for wearing in the theatre, one presumes.

Thirty minutes of expectation pass. A ward boy comes and asks the next batch of four to await the call. The surgery of the first batch must be over, one guesses.

A little later, the nurse reappears and asks the 'bystander' of Mrs N to identify himself. She asks him to hand over the bag containing the clothes of his wife, which he does. The next four, including my wife, are herded in the direction of the theatre.

Post haste, she returns with the bag and tells Mr N, "There seems to have been a mix-up. Your wife says these are not her clothes."

She collects back all the four bags, takes them to the gentleman and asks him to identify which of the four is his wife's. She pulls out the clothes one by one and displays them.

One of the bags has a peach-coloured sari, the second a navy blue ikat kameez and a white salwar, the third a mundu-veshti set and the last a black top and ice-blue jeans.

Mr N looks at the garments, fumbles, scratches his head in embarrassment and admits that he cannot identify his wife's clothes!

The nurse retreats to the theatre with the four bags: the patient would know which is hers.

I ask myself: she could have asked the other three bystanders to identify the clothes of their wives and, through this process of elimination, identify Mrs N's clothes.

Perhaps she was not too strong in the Logical Reasoning department. Or, by then, she had realised that husbands couldn't care less what their wives wore, which seems more likely.

THE CASE FOR (NOT OF) THE ONE-ARMED STENOGRAPHER

 

The other day, while writing a piece reminiscing my childhood, I wrote something like "... Moideen gave him the colour pencil ..." While revising the draft, a question popped up in my mind: should it not be "... Moideen gave the colour pencil to him ..."?

The more I pondered over the existential question, the more confused I was. So I asked someone who I thought could settle the matter one and for all by pronouncing the semantic verdict.

The expert told me that the problem arises because "to give" is a ditransitive verb: it takes two objects. OutFowlering the redoubtable Fowler, he added that there are five types of verbs: intransitive (Water flowed), monotransitive (The queen knighted him), ditransitive (She gave him the signal), tritransitive (I bet you ten rupees that she will not turn up) and ambitransitive (Usually, he ate — or ate his dinner — before 9 pm).

Though I was edified far beyond what John Collinson Nesfield or Percival Christopher Wren and his inseparable companion Martin had taught me, and I learnt about these nuances, he did not address my pressing problem.

So I asked him the question (Or, should it be "I asked the question to him"?) again. He said, "Moideen gave him the colour pencil" is as good as "Moideen gave the colour pencil to him" and the writer can chose what he considers better.

His reply reminded me of a law firm which the bank I had worked for used to consult. Let us call them Mirchandani and Iyengar. Their legal reports running into several pages — and costing several thousands of rupees — would contain references to Acts, Laws, customs and practices and cite case laws from courts in India and abroad and be replete with legal jargon (mens rea, ipso facto, mutatis mutandis, assentio mentium, and the like). They would discuss both sides of the issue at hand in great and intricate detail and conclude with "the bank may take an informed administrative decision in the matter."

My boss used to say after reading these reports that he suspected that there was an understanding between the two partners of the firm: Mirchandani would say one thing and Iyengar the opposite. The stenographer would faithfully take down both opinions. After typing out Mirchandani's view, she would open a new paragraph beginning "On the other hand," and record the opinion of Iyengar. Then she would add "the bank may take an informed administrative decision in the matter", the mandatory caveat.

"How I wish the steno had only one hand!" he would exclaim, suppressing a chuckle.

THE STORY OF A WHATSAPP GROUP

It was in the early days of WhatsApp that the a few classmates belonging to the batch of 1975 decided to form a WhatsApp group called the Old Boy's Association (OBA). In the first week, there were only six members, but soon word spread and the number swelled to thirty. And then the students of the other divisions were admitted. It was just a matter of weeks that the number crossed two digits. Encouraged, the admin threw open the forum to all the alumni of the school. They were all strung together by the common thread of the alma mater.

By the time I joined the group, it already had more than three hundred members from as far away as the US in the west and Japan in the east, but predictably, the majority was India-based. Members

belonged to different generations: while I was from the batch of 1961, I learnt from the profiles that some were decades senior to me and some were as recent as 2019.

The camaraderie of the members and the good cheer that they spread had to be seen to be believed. One did not mind the fact that one had to earmark a chunk of one's leisure hours to delete the inevitable good morning and good night messages, birthday greetings (though merely a crisp HBD in many cases) and anniversary wishes.

They shared stories of the pranks they played in and out of the school campus, posted some old group photos and referred to teachers by their nicknames. Many wrote nostalgically about their teenage crushes and rued the fact that they were destined to grow up.

Soon, there was an issue: there was a disconnect when the seniors went through the posts of juniors as they could not even understand the lingo some of them used. Likewise, the juniors could not enjoy the dialogue between two seniors as the topics discussed and the personalities featured had retired long before.

So the admin found it expedient to form a few subgroups: OBA 1940s, OBA 1950s, OBA 1960s and so on till OBA 2010s, the number denoting the decade in which one left the school. Thus I belong to the OBA 1960s group. Obviously, the OBA 1940s and the OBA 1950s groups were small compared to the others and the 2010s was the largest — and most vibrant.

Inevitably, sooner than later, people got fed up regurgitating old tales and started looking for new stuff. They shared jokes and cartoons, news clippings and forwards, memes and trolls, videos and songs. Though not related to the school days, they were interesting nevertheless. Motivational talks, health-related articles, advice on wealth management too made frequent appearance. The traffic in the group became dense, with devotional songs and talks by religious leaders, patriotic slogans and political pieces becoming regular fare.

Some members opined that as everyone may not be interested in all these, it is not fair to burden EVERYONE with ALL posts. The admins (by then, there was a team of admins instead of one) formed a few new groups dedicated to different areas — OBA Music, OBA Health, OBA Jokes, OBA Religion, OBA Politics, OBA Literature, OBA Wealth, etc. One was free to join multiple groups depending on one's interest, but cross-posts (Homoeopathy posts in, say, OBA Literature, for instance) were a strict no-no.

But then there was a problem: those who enjoy Semmangudi and Amjad Ali Khan found it difficult to co-exist with fans of Metallica and Pink Floyd. Votaries of vegan food could not stomach the recipes of Mutton Yakni and devilled venison. The puritans among the book-loving community found discussions on some works by certain authors distasteful.

The admins were up against a wall. The problem that the members were facing was genuine and serious. So the roped in some volunteers from different interest-groups to act as admins of new groups formed for the different segments. At the last count, OBA had 127 groups, some representational names being OBA 1980s, OBA Ghazals, OBA BeeGees, OBA Yunani, OBA Trinamool, OBA Harry Potter, OBA Dark humour, OBA Hrithik Roshan, OBA Bobanum Molleyum, OBA Nihilism, OBA CPM, OBA Bailey's Irish Cream, OBA Tintin, OBA Porn, OBA Theosophy, OBA Harley Davidson, OBA Indore Gharaana, OBA Space Science, OBA UPSC Exams and OBA Kosher food.

This works! I am a member of only eleven of them which hold my interest.

MEMORIES TRIGGERED

Yesterday my friend Dr Mohan Thomas Abraham and I were playing a game of Scrabble. (Whichever part of the world we may be in, every Monday and Thursday, we play an online game at 6:00 pm!) At some stage in the game, my rack had what I thought was a bingo-friendly combination: AGIINP and a blank. I could make PAI(R)ING but it was a "non-go" (the Scrabble player's jargon for a Bingo on the rack that encounters a no-go on the board. Or PAI(N)ING.

I wished I had an S in place of the second I in which case the possibilities seemed endless: SPA(C)ING, S(C)APING, SPA(R)ING, (R)ASPING, S(H)APING, P(H)ASING, PAS(S)ING, PAS(T)ING. PA(R)SING, SAP(P)ING, (L)APSING, GASPIN(G) — and many more. Buy then, as in life, so in Scrabble. I philosophised: you don't get everything you want.

That was when the word PIGNOLIA flashed in my mind. Not a common word, I agree. Like almonds or cashew nut, this edible nut of a pine tree is used in confections. I could make the word using the floating 'O' of the OVARY on the board. I did exactly that and scored a hefty 78 points.

Now, though I had come across this word in 1957 — that is, a good six decades and a half back — I was using this word for the first time in my life and in my Scrabble journey.

I was in Class VII in the MCCHS (Malabar Christian College High School) in what was then called Calicut. Our class teacher was Mr VM Easow who taught us English and mathematics. The strong foundation he laid in these subjects is what I built upon. Equally, if not more importantly, I cherish the values "Easow-Maash" taught us.

Easow-Maash had an impeccable handwriting, whether he wrote on the blackboard or on paper. A typical foolscap (NOT fullscape, he would repeat) sheet with his writing would have thirty lines — no more, no less — (I can see Easow-Maash frowning that I did not use the correct "no fewer") and no over-writings, no corrections and no ersures.

The last periods on Fridays were allotted to the class teacher. Easow-Maash used it for personal interaction with the students and overall development: elocution, recitation, quiz, etc. On days when the weather permitted, we would venture out: he would take us to the college playground. Though his house was on a plot adjoining the playground, instead of going home at the end of the period, he would walk us back to the class and leave the school only after the long bell goes.

On one of those Fridays, Easow-Maash took us to the beach. We picked up seashells and pebbles and made sand-pits and sand-castles. Some who had gone to the shaded area of casuarina trees came back with their pockets full of its seeds with spikes. That was when Easow-Maash told us about acorns and pignolia, the seeds of pine trees.

A strict disciplinarian, he always carried a slender cane while in school. After entering the class, he would place carefully place on the table, making sure that everyone saw it. I don't however recall a single instance when Easow-Maash wielded the cane, though! A frown, a stare, an angry glare — and the most recalcitrant brat would cower and submit.

The stern-faced teacher had a impishly humorous facet too. The proverb which goes something like:

"The greatest oak

Was once a tiny nut

That held its ground."

was paraphrased by Easow-Maash as:

"The mighty oak

Was once a little acorn;

And the tallest yew

A nut like you!"

He would tweak the children's rhyme

"Under the spreading chestnut tree

There we sit, both you and me.

Oh, how happy we will be!

Under the spreading chestnut tree."

to

"Under the spreading chestnut tree

I sold you and you sold me.

Oh, how happy we will be!

Under the spreading chestnut tree."

(Mind you, this was long before horse-trading and resort-politics had acquired the currency and the legitimacy they enjoy today!)

Tailpiece: Even after placing PIGNOLIA, I lost!

TRUE TO TYPE

My friend Muhammad Ali has put up an interesting post on stenography and dictating letters. There he has also narrated the evolution of the machines he used: from his father's old Remington manual typewriter whose keys he punched when he started out, to the feather-touch keyboard of the laptop he uses now. The journey has had several pit-stops where he used different variants: the clunky machine in the neighborhood typewriting institute, Olivetti manual, Brother electric and electronic typewriters, word-processors and now computers with the user-friendly speech-to-text feature.

That is the story of my life too, except that it was an Underwood instead of a Remington. And the typewriting institute bit — I did not attend one because there was none in the village I lived in. That lack of education shows: I still use my right middle finger for all the typing that I do and my left thumb for the "capital shift". I can clock a speed of 30 words per minute and though I cannot boast of a six-sigma level, my output is generally error-free.

These days I rely a lot on the speech-to-text feature both in English and Malayalam and have attained about 90% accuracy. The problem is that I have to be on the lookout for the gaffes like FACE for PHASE (and vice versa) and "The penis mightier than the sword."

I was in my early twenties when I had my first stenographer (That does sound pompous! He was actually the only one in the department I was attached to and, truth to tell, was shared by the three officers senior to me; I only tagged along!) Shesha Iyer (Swamy to everyone), the epitome of competence in his chosen field, had barely one year to retire. Having been with the organisation for thirty-seven long years, he was a fantastic resource person.

One of my bosses who was not too good at dictation often used to feel the urge to use the services of a stenographer, if only for ramping up his self-esteem. He would call Shesha Iyer, start dictating the letter number, date, addressee, salutation, subject line and after "With reference to your letter number (reading it aloud from the file) dated (again reading it aloud), comma, we have to advise as under, colon."

After this elaborate introduction, he would look up from the file and sit back in the swivel chair. He would then close the file and hand it over to the amanuensis with the words, "Swamy, you know what I have in mind. Please bring the draft reply." And Swami would do exactly that: an appropriate and correctly-worded reply would be on the boss' table in fewer than thirty minutes.

But I have digressed, for, I wanted to relate my experience with Shesha Iyer. Being a rookie, I would, at times, get stuck for the right word. From the context, he would guess what I had mind and supply me with the right phrase or word. The unsolicited, though welcome, input would interrupt the flow of my thought.

After a couple of such interventions, temporarily abandoning my usual respect for the grey hair and the bald pate, I asked him, "Swamy, are you, or am I, the one dictating the letter?"

STOREHOUSE OF ABSOLUTELY USELESS INFORMATION

 STOREHOUSE OF ABSOLUTELY USELESS INFORMATION

My friend Radhakrishnan Nair posted on his wall: How many words can you think of in a minute without the letter 'a'? Clue: I can think of a hundred in a minute.

He gave the answer soon enough: one to one hundred! Did you know that?

I am sure he was simplifying the question for us. What he did not tell us is that in fact, none of the letters A, B, C and D is present in any of the numbers zero to ninety-nine!

And, if one ignores the A in "and" (as in 101), the letter A first comes in 1000. The first B comes in one billion. For the first C, you have to travel as far as octillion (I followed by 27 zeroes!) [We are, of course, not talking about the Indian system of enumeration where crores and lakhs (also spelt lacs) are used.] D first comes in "thousand".

Of what earthly use is this information? About as useful as the knowledge that the King of Hearts is the only king in a deck of cards without a moustache. Or that the color you'll see when you open your eyes in a pitch-black room is called "eigengrau." Or when you say "I'll be back in a jiffy", you are guilty of extreme exaggeration because a jiffy is one trillionth of a second.

The word "dreamt", apart from "undreamt" derived from it, is the only word ending in MT. And some common words like month, orange, purple and silver have no rhyming words.

Here are some more:

The opposite sides of a die (used in a game of Ludo or Snakes and Ladders) will always add up to seven.

Golf balls have an average of 336 "dimples."

"Spoonfeed" is the longest word with letters in the reverse alphabetical order.

When words with f followed by i (like define, fight, office, difficult) are printed, the little dot over the i (did you know that it is called tittle?) disappears. Can't believe this? Check the words in this paragraph!

My brain is a repository of such useless information. Why do I collect and retain them? The answer is what George Mallory gave when he was asked, "Why do you climb the Everest?" He famously replied, "Because it is there."

FAMILIARITY BREEDS "COULDN'T-CARE-LESS-NESS"

 FAMILIARITY BREEDS "COULDN'T-CARE-LESS-NESS"

I am sitting in the waiting area adjoining an operation theatre where my wife is to undergo a cataract surgery. There are perhaps twenty surgeries scheduled for the forenoon. The patients and the 'bystanders' — in most cases the respective spouses — are all seated on the cushioned sofas. (It beats me why this blessed word — which means a 'mere, passive, onlooker' — is used for referring to someone who is supposed to be at the beck and call of the patient, the doctor, the nurse, the ward boy and the cashier, but let that pass.)

Presently, a nurse appears and announces the names of four patients — all women. She beckons them to follow her to the theatre. They get up, nod to the respective 'bystander' and proceed.

Ten minutes later, the nurse returns with four identical bags and hands over them to the four 'bystanders' of the patients now in the theatre. "It is the clothes of the patients," she explains. The hospital has thoughtfully provided uniforms to the patients for wearing in the theatre, one presumes.

Thirty minutes of expectation pass. A ward boy comes and asks the next batch of four to await the call. The surgery of the first batch must be over, one guesses.

A little later, the nurse reappears and asks the 'bystander' of Mrs N to identify himself. She asks him to hand over the bag containing the clothes of his wife, which he does. The next four, including my wife, are herded in the direction of the theatre.

Post haste, she returns with the bag and tells Mr N, "There seems to have been a mix-up. Your wife says these are not her clothes."

She collects back all the four bags, takes them to the gentleman and asks him to identify which of the four is his wife's. She pulls out the clothes one by one and displays them.

One of the bags has a peach-coloured sari, the second a navy blue ikat kameez and a white salwar, the third a mundu-veshti set and the last a black top and ice-blue jeans.

Mr N looks at the garments, fumbles, scratches his head in embarrassment and admits that he cannot identify his wife's clothes!

The nurse retreats to the theatre with the four bags: the patient would know which is hers.

I ask myself: she could have asked the other three bystanders to identify the clothes of their wives and, through this process of elimination, identify Mrs N's clothes.

Perhaps she was not too strong in the Logical Reasoning department. Or, by then, she had realised that husbands couldn't care less what their wives wore, which seems more likely.

THE CASE FOR (NOT OF) THE ONE-ARMED STENOGRAPHER

 THE CASE FOR (NOT OF) THE ONE-ARMED STENOGRAPHER

The other day, while writing a piece reminiscing my childhood, I wrote something like "... Moideen gave him the colour pencil ..." While revising the draft, a question popped up in my mind: should it not be "... Moideen gave the colour pencil to him ..."?

The more I pondered over the existential question, the more confused I was. So I asked someone who I thought could settle the matter one and for all by pronouncing the semantic verdict.

The expert told me that the problem arises because "to give" is a ditransitive verb: it takes two objects. OutFowlering the redoubtable Fowler, he added that there are five types of verbs: intransitive (Water flowed), monotransitive (The queen knighted him), ditransitive (She gave him the signal), tritransitive (I bet you ten rupees that she will not turn up) and ambitransitive (Usually, he ate — or ate his dinner — before 9 pm).

Though I was edified far beyond what John Collinson Nesfield or Percival Christopher Wren and his inseparable companion Martin had taught me, and I learnt about these nuances, he did not address my pressing problem.

So I asked him the question (Or, should it be "I asked the question to him"?) again. He said, "Moideen gave him the colour pencil" is as good as "Moideen gave the colour pencil to him" and the writer can chose what he considers better.

His reply reminded me of a law firm which the bank I had worked for used to consult. Let us call them Mirchandani and Iyengar. Their legal reports running into several pages — and costing several thousands of rupees — would contain references to Acts, Laws, customs and practices and cite case laws from courts in India and abroad and be replete with legal jargon (mens rea, ipso facto, mutatis mutandis, assentio mentium, and the like). They would discuss both sides of the issue at hand in great and intricate detail and conclude with "the bank may take an informed administrative decision in the matter."

My boss used to say after reading these reports that he suspected that there was an understanding between the two partners of the firm: Mirchandani would say one thing and Iyengar the opposite. The stenographer would faithfully take down both opinions. After typing out Mirchandani's view, she would open a new paragraph beginning "On the other hand," and record the opinion of Iyengar. Then she would add "the bank may take an informed administrative decision in the matter", the mandatory caveat.

"How I wish the steno had only one hand!" he would exclaim, suppressing a chuckle.

DIPLOMACY

One mid-morning, my boss summoned me to his office. Sitting before him were three others, the oldest in the traditional kurta-pajama and a bandh-gala jacket. The other two were younger men nattily dressed in wrinkle-free shirts, trousers and colour-coordinated ties. One wore a turban too.

The boss motioned to me a chair. Thanking him, I sat on it next to the Sardarji.

"Meet Lala Amarnath, my friend for over three decades," the boss said. "When I was posted in ... as branch manager, Lalaji was my most valuable customer. His father was the richest man in the taluk and had the largest land-holding which he had inherited. He is the chairman of the local cooperative sugar mill."

Lalaji shifted his portly frame in the chair, greeted me with folded hands and proceeded to introduce me to the other two. Shamsher Singh Bagga is the Manging Director of the sugar mill and Samir Mittal is the General Manger (Finance).

As I shook their hands, the boss told them, "KT is our new Deputy General Manager (Credit). He has come on deputation from State Bank of Travancore where he was handling corporate credit. The youngest DGM in State Bank group, he is an expert in credit appraisal. Your application for switching over from ... Bank is in safe hands."

Turning to me, the boss said, "The mill is now being financed by ... Bank but Lalaji would like to switch over to our bank for better service. For us, it will be a worthwhile proposition because the advance will be self-liquidating in nature. During the four-five months of the sugar season, the loan account would be fully drawn, but in the remaining months, it would show a huge credit balance. Think of the interest on the loan and the interest-free deposits!"

Meanwhile, Charanjit had come in with a tray of tea and biscuits. After tea and some small talk, the boss asked me to take Bagga and Mittal of the company to my room for discussions and return, while he would spend some time with the Lalaji.

Once in my room, Bagga handed over to me an envelope containing a letter requesting for credit facilities. Mittal opened his briefase and took out a file containing the financial statements for the previous three years. After speaking to me for some time about the company, the two went back to join Lalaji.

On going through the financial statements, I saw that continuous losses had eroded the entire capital. It was in such a sorry state that no banker in his right senses would touch such a proposal with a barge-pole.

The intercom phone buzzed. At the other end was the boss. Before I could broach the subject of the poor financials, he told me, "KT, that Lalaji is a big crook. Don't sanction that loan. Forget all the good things I said about him in his presence. That was just to please him."

PROXY

 It was the 1950s. Many families in North Malabar were still matrilineal and uncles called the shots.

Parvati was a middle-aged housewife living a miserable life, her husband having deserted her and their two small children. Though they were entitled to a fair share in the property of the joint family, it was administered by Kunhiraman, her maternal uncle.

He would collect all the produce (coconut, arecanut, cashew etc) and sell them. Though Parvati and her children were also entitled to it, he would keep all the money. To be fair, I must add that he would supply the victuals to the household.

Parvati had to do all the domestic chores in return for three meals for herself and her children. When she was not in the kitchen breathing in the smoke from the hearth fuelled by firewood and palm fronds, she had to tend to the cows and the chicken coop as well as nurture the kitchen garden.

On certain days, the uncle would announce that there would be guests in the evening. Parvati knew what it meant: she would have to fry chicken to serve as short eats for the guests who would be served raack, the country hooch.

It was on such days that she would give vent to her ire against the uncle who was the cause of her misery. She would catch a bird from the coup, christen it 'Kunhiraman' and wring its neck.

PET-NAME

Sangameswara Iyer was on a short visit to London where his son worked. With no one else for company, he soon started feeling bored.

So he was glad when, during his morning constitutional one day in the streets of Southall, he sighted a lanky, grey-haired gentleman walking his four dogs. Happy to see a fellow-Indian, Iyer raised his hand and greeted him when they came close, but the stranger ignored it. He must have migrated to England in his teens, Iyer told himself, and must have acquired the local traits: he would not speak unless introduced and spoken to.

Next morning Iyer made bold to stop the stranger and said "Good morning!" which elicited the same greeting, albeit reluctantly, in return.

Though this continued for a week, there was no further progress in communication. Iyer could not bear his solitude any longer.

So the next day, Iyer asked him, "Good morning, are these your dogs?" Obviously a stupid query, in retrospect he realised, when he heard the terse "Yes."

He decided that the other party being obviously a cynophilist, the best opening gambit would be an enquiry about his pets.

He went to the Osterley Bookshop specialising in used books and purchased an illustrated book on dogs. Iyer read up about the different canine breeds, particularly, the varieties the person he wanted to befriend kept.

The next morning, fortified with the knowledge about the canine species, he enquired, "How old is this St Bernard?"

Oh boy, that worked! It sparked off a conversation. He replied, "Four."

"And this pug?"

"Just past three."

"How about the labrador?"

"He is the oldest of the lot: eleven."

"And this white terrier?"

"Seven."

"What do you call them?"

"Satvinder Singh, Gurmeet Singh, Devinder Singh and Harjeet Singh."

Having established diplomatic ties, Iyer introduced himself, "I am Sangameswara Iyer from Tiruchendur in Tamil Nadu. Pleased to meet you. What is your name?"

"Tommy."

GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELPS THEMSELVES

Countless is the number of meetings I have attended in my career spanning over three decades. Before every meeting, the secretarial staff place a pencil before my name plate on conference table. When I see a pencil, I MUST have it. I do not know if you will brand me a klepto, but I confess: one thing that I cannot stop myself from is acquiring – beg, borrow or steal I will – pencils.

So, at the end of every meeting, I invariably take the pencil and put it into my pocket. I do not feel guilty about it because I know that the pencil is meant for me.

Likewise, I am not, for once, smitten by the pangs of conscience when I recall after checking out of a hotel room that I could not resist the temptation to ‘steal’ the pencil they keep next to the scribbling pads on the bedside table, the writing table and the toilet. (Why one in the smallest room, I have always wondered. Maybe the brightest of ideas spring forth in the loo, as good old Archimedes demonstrated in the third century BC.)

I have my collection of Parkers and Sheaffers, Crosses and Watermans, DuPonts and Mont Blanc Meisterstucks, oodles of them, but I love pencils. Why pencils, you may ask. That is a million-dollar question.

Coming to think of it, it is not just the pencil that catches my fancy. I like those scribbling pads too. I jot down ideas or thoughts that flash in my brain, in the scribbling pad which doubles as my organizer. I want to use these ideas later . I always have a scribbling pad nearby, to note down phone numbers or messages, or a list of things to do the next day. This pad is where I arrange my daily life.

I am not partial to these items: I love the entire range of hotel stationery – letter paper and envelopes. I like to impress my mother by sending a letter in the thick manila envelope containing a missive written on the letter paper of a five star luxury hotel.

How can I forget toiletry – shampoo and hair conditioner, moisturiser and talcum powder, soap and disposable razor which I help myself to? I do not lay my hands, however, on napkins, bath towels or bath robes. Some hotels pin a notice on the bathrobe exhorting the guest to contact the front office if he (or she) would like to ‘buy’ the bathrobe. Clever guys, aren’t they? Ditto with the luxury leather folio in which the letter paper and envelopes are placed.

As long as they do not attach such labels on pencils, stationery and toiletries, my inner voice won’t hold me back!

A SEA-FACING ROOM FOR THE BOSS

Mr Niyogi loved the good things in life – rich food, fine clothes, a game of golf, and the like (which implies a lot). Whenever he visited Bombay (It was in the 1970's, not Mumbai yet), the epicurean wanted to stay at the five-star Taj. And he wanted a sea-facing room which had premium rates.

According to his service conditions, he was not entitled to a room of that category or hotel, but he would ask Mr Borker, the Manager of the local branch, to arrange a room of his choice. Mr Borker could not afford to incur the wrath of the boss. If he did not oblige the boss, he would find himself posted in Cochin or Calcutta, Hyderabad or Ahmedabad. A transfer from Bombay was the last thing he wanted. So he somehow obliged the boss by accommodating this requirement.

I do not know how Mr Borker met the difference between the bill and the amount the boss was entitled to, but that is not one of our concerns for the present. Let us assume that it was by some sleight of hand which I am not privy to, but the fact is that Mr Borker kept the boss happy.

Mr Borker was at his wit’s end when the boss announced a visit at short notice. It was a Wednesday and boss was arriving on Friday. The test match was on and the Aussies and the English team were in town. The hotel was booked. Not a room to spare even in the neighbouring Hotel Diplomat, leave alone the upmarket Taj.

With no choice left, Mr Borker booked him in another hotel, I think, The Classic or The Paradise Hotel, beside the Diplomat. He persuaded the reservation clerk to earmark a sea-facing room for the boss.

Come Friday, Mr Borker felt jittery as he received the boss in the airport. During the small talk, he brought up the topic of the Test match and prepared the boss for his stay in a hotel other than The Taj. The boss was not too pleased and made no secret of his displeasure.

‘But sir, it is a sea-facing room,’ Mr Borker tried to assuage the hurt.

Once inside the hotel, he followed the boss who followed the bellboy who led the way, hauling the luggage. The room was on the third floor.

After the bellboy left, the boss growled at Mr Borker, ‘Where is the sea, Mr Borker?’

Whereupon Mr Borker opened the door to the toilet, climbed on to the throne, and, twisting his neck at an awkward angle, peered through the gap between the leaves of the exhaust fan. Craning his neck further, he spotted a small patch of blue, and with a sense of victory, he announced, ‘There, Sir, the sea is there!’

SARTORIAL PROPRIETY

I was undergoing Head Office training – the last lap of the induction of a Probationary Officer into the Bank. As many would testify, this is the best part of one's life – no grappling with the ledgers and books, no balancing to do, no responsibility, no accountability. All you have to do is to thumb through the files maintained in the different departments and learn what you can about procedure and correspondence.

Thus it was that I chanced upon a file with the label 'Surprise Inspection Reports of One-man Branches'. For the uninitiated, establishment of one-man branch was an experiment that banks toyed with in the days of Social Control (pre-Nationalisation). Set up in unbanked areas, these branches would undertake limited transactions – deposits and small loans. To keep the overheads low, it was decided that there would be no joint custodian for the cash and valuables. The officer-in-charge himself would handle cash and the gold pledged as security.

This arrangement made it necessary to have more frequent inspections of these units because the credo of bankers is ‘Trust, but verify’. Free from the fetters of joint custodianship, the officer-in-charge could play with Bank’s cash and land both in trouble. Therefore surprise inspections were prescribed. It was also stipulated that not more than a fortnight should elapse between two inspections.

I went through many such reports. The verification had exposed nothing untoward on the official front, but a sentence in one of the reports cried out aloud for attention: ‘The officer-in-charge is advised to be properly attired while in the branch during non-banking hours.’

I was intrigued.

I located the signatory of the report. He was a middle level officer then (a few years senior to me). I button-holed him and asked him the circumstances in which the comment was made.

“It was a one-man branch located in a suburban coastal village. Looks like my boss has forgotten that a surprise inspection was due because the fortnight was ending that day. It suddenly dawned on him that if inspection was not done on that day, there would be violation of the stipulation of fortnightly inspections.

“So he called me in the afternoon, assigned me the task of surprise verification and asked me to rush to the branch.

“It was past banking hours when he reached the branch. That was the time the officer-in-charge was to write up the accounts for the day. "When I went in, he was seated in his chair, legs resting on the table, wearing a thin towel around his midriff and anointing himself liberally with balaaguluchyaadi oil."