Heroes who like zeros

One of my cousins is a born story-teller. Ummm...no, that won't do. He is a story teller probably since the moment he was conceived. The special thing about his stories are, you will never be able to tell facts from fiction in those stories, if you don't know him well. But with experience, I learnt that there is a pattern to his lies. He lies when he is the protagonist of the story. So last night when he told me about a recent incident not involving himself, I knew I could reproduce it anywhere without the "all characters are fictional" disclaimer.

The story involved his gutless chicken-of-a-boss, one of his blatantly dishonest client and a couple of ^%$@&*! I-T officers. It started with the unscrupulous client making a hell lot of money in a transaction, also involving my cousin's boss. The I-T guys somehow smelt it and came to the client's office for further investigation. One of the officers asked the client("politely") to get up from his seat so that he could himself sit there and check if he was trying to hide any files in his desk. This infuriated the client and he yelled, "tumhaari aukaat nahi hai is chair pe baithne ki". The brief war of words that ensued later ended with the I-T officers shown the door by the security personnel. My cousin didn't tell me if the officers didn't have a proper search warrant but the story was building up so nicely, i didn't dare disturb the momentum.

The officer's ego was so badly hurt by the incident, he swore that he will bring that businessman to his knees very soon. The I-T people started visiting my cousin's office frequently after that incident, looking for incriminating evidence against the client. For "obvious"(?) reasons, my cousin's boss chose to hide all the details regarding the transaction. He was summoned to the I-T office(the HQ) a couple of days later. Over there, the same I-T officer who had unfinished business ( and balance sheets ) to take care of, very amiably asked him if that was the first time he had come to an I-T headquarter. He offered to show him around and took him to the "recording room". There they played a recording of the cell-phone conversation where he(the boss) was found telling the client how efficiently they had kept his secret from the I-T dept, asking for more business at the end of conversation. For the next few hours the officer made him sing like a canary.

A week or so later, armed with all the information and documentation the officer called up the businessman and,...... *beep* ...... and this was when my khufia cell phone chose to konk off. Like a madman I ran to the other room and put it on charge. My voice quivering with excitement, I called him back immediately to know what happened next. "Nothing", my brother said. "They agreed to settle it for 35000000. The files were burnt."

Ek option ka premium tum kya jaano, Ramesh Babu

28 years of my existence on this planet has made me, among other things, sure of two facts. Succinctly put, they are 1. God loves me and 2. He doesn't trust my judgement. I feel so confident about it because of a fabulous analogy that exists here. I remember my parents used to explicitly tell me what to do and what not to, even when I was in college. I used to do things not because I wanted to, but because I was told or rather ordered to. My parents had faith in my abilities but not in the choices I made. So they finally stopped presenting me with any options. If they ever did, I always picked the wrong one.

Sometime in the last 10-12 years, I believe, God took up this job (of keeping me optionless) Himself. Must have been the result of my mom's countless no of prayers.
And I tell you what. God is doing a helluva great job.

I keep seeing people abusing their right to choose, all around me. Since they've always had it, they don't understand its importance. I do. Today I met this friend of mine who told me how fucked up she gets in the head with every relationship that doesn't work out. What really intrigued me was the fact that all of those relationships looked shaky at the very onset. I was about to ask this to her, when it suddenly hit me. There are some people who live their life like an intra day trader. Going long on something which seems profitable at that moment, even if its future looks gloomy.

But unfortunately, this is where the similarities end. While an intra day trader starts every day afresh, having closed out all his previous positions, it's diffcult forr a person to start a relationship with a clean slate. Also, most of the day traders refrain from trading when there aren't enough profit-making opportunities in the market, but when it comes to relationships, most of the people seldom wait for the right person to arrive. They simply go for the best one available and move on. What I mean is, even if you present them with three negative numbers, they would still consider the one closest to 0 as a "good choice".

What people normally fail to understand is, an option is a right and not an obligation to act. Not just in Financial Markets, but in real life too. And not choosing to exercise that right is also an option available to you. In fact, not choosing could sometimes be the smartest choice. The best thing of course would be to have someone filter away all the bad options available to you, but lets face it, God may not as fond of you as He is of me.


So don't let the illusion of choice fool you. Lack of options is sometimes way better than having a lot of options. In fact that's the biggest proof that God loves you. So next time it happens, instead of bitterly saying, "I have noooooo choice!!!!", look up, smile one of your widest smiles, say thanks and get yourself ready. Ready to return the favor one day.