Tax Katao. Desh badhao. Or so they say.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. - Benjamin Franklin

That is such a profound thought by the great US Statesman, Sir Benjamin Franklin. For deep thinkers like Mr. Franklin, coming up with such deep insights was a regular affair. I also arrive at similar conclusions, though the frequency of my philosophical outbursts is very limited in number and quality. For instance, I'm only reminded of the inevitability of paying taxes, when the financial year is drawing to a close and the emails from the account department are moved from the inbox to the important folder.  I contemplate over the absurdity of the tax system. Then after a week or so, when the reminder mail comes again, I hurriedly take steps to mend the ways and invest. I also google for books written by Adam Smith and Karl Marx to understand the tax system, but it all leads me to nowhere because banner ads on SIP, Mutual Funds, LIC and possibly every other financial instrument follow me like a ghost. Making frequent calls to dad, uncles and senior colleagues also is a part of the process. Some give consolation, some good advice and some are happy in the fact that ignorance is bliss. And before I delve deeper into the chaos and complexity of it all, I do what seems necessary and right in the moment. After few days of mourning over 'tax cut gaya yaar', I happily accept that I've paid the government to build public projects and fund my convenience. I feel proud to be a responsible citizen unless I go out in the rains and find an unplanned city getting ruined by even a half-an-hour rain. But blabbering and ramblings apart, here are a few lessons I think are note-worthy. 

How to Save Tax (Lessons from a failed tax saver)

1) Start early in the financial year. The more you delay, the more hefty feb-march-april will be. You'll cry like a kid who has been deprived of all his money from the piggy bank. 

2) Think twice before investing in LIC. Remember, insurance is not an investment. It is just freaking insurance. See your SUM ASSSURED and imagine what your family members will get once you are not there. The average rate of return on LIC is a mere 4%. Consider the rate of inflation when you calculate your returns and you'll find out, it is a loss making proposition. But why do people do it? Because of the so-called security net of LIC, which agents sell pompously. I'm not saying don't do LIC. But make sure, you're not wasting all your hard-earned money on LIC policies. Don't let the agents fool you. Here's how LIC is bailing out the government and its PSUs, every single time. So much for securing our future. LOLism. It is a tool to fund loss-making PSUs, that's it.

3) Get a term-plan. And yes, term-plan isn't a LIFE insurance. It insures your family members in case of your unfortunate death. You may choose not to buy money-back, ULIP, child plan etc but don't delay in taking a term-plan. It safeguards the future of your family. If you have sufficient assets and investments to provide for your family post your death, it is ok not to take a term plan. But how many of us have so much wealth to leave behind. A handful of us, right? Make sure the current cash flow remains the same for your wife and kids even when you are not there.

4) Get a home-loan if you can afford. It takes a huge chunk of your tax savings. Buying a house is a certainly a huge, huge liability but there are some positives that outdo the negatives. Think ahead. I haven't taken a home loan yet because I can't afford but my knowledge says, it can be fruitful in the long run. I know the burden of EMIs is equally painful. It is a call an individual has to take personally keeping in mind his financial robustness.

5) For 3 or 5 year financial goals, invest in ELSS and SIPs. The ROI is far better than a LIC or any other bank instruments. They help in tax savings and come with a lock-in period.

6) Retirement fund is often ignored and we generally tend to laugh at the mere mention of it. I do the same. But investing in PPF can possibly safeguard your financial life after retirement. According to my understanding, divide your retirement savings between PPF and growth Mutual Funds (if you are young, 25-35) to compensate for secure investment and some wealth growth. 

There are many other investment tools and 'n' number of ways to do it.  I know a person who has put all his life savings in a Savings Bank Account, because he is afraid of doing any investments in any financial instrument. He should be called the Father of Conservative Thinking. But then, to each his own.

Amen!

PS: Do contact your tax consultant or aliens to understand everything before investing. If you have some money you want to donate, please feel free to contact me.

Finally Decoded: JK Rowling's Success Mantra. And it's Hilarious!

She has created one of the most adored characters of all times. And probably the only school on the planet Earth where all kids would want to go, everyday of the year. 

The author of Harry Potter fantasy series, JK Rowling has achieved what every writer can only dream of - success, fame and most importantly, abundant love from her readers. With so much love and success, it is easy to assume that she has the master secrets to succeed in life. 

At least that's what a gentleman assumed, who had created a video on 'JK Rowling's Top Ten Rules' and shared on Twitter. 

JK Rowling's witty reply will leave you in awe of her. And very, very silently, it says everything about the fixation we have with success of super achievers. We try to find patterns in each success story and then project it on to others. But honestly, it all isn't so simple, as JK Rowling points out. Read her awesome reply below! 

I loved her response. She is so witty, just like her characters!

What do you think about her response? You can share your thoughts in the comments below or click here to follow me on Twitter (@itzkundan). 

Regards,

Kundan

ख्वाब हो या कोई हकीक़त

ख्वाब हो या कोई हकीक़त,
उम्मीद हो की अफसाना तुम,
कुछ पलो की बारिश हो,
या कुछ शब्दों की दुनिया तुम,
कितना समेत लू तुमको खुद में,
बहती नदिया की धारा हो तुम,
अविरल, निश्चल, चंचल प्रतिमा,
हस्ती काया में तुम सिमटी,
खुद की एक अद्भुत दुनिया हो तुम,
ख्वाब हो या कोई हकीक़त,
उम्मीद हो की अफसाना तुम...

Charles Darwin: Pros and Cons of Marriage

This is what the 29-year-old Charles Darwin wrote in a letter to his friend regarding his thoughts on marriage. This was scribbled in the 18th century but the thoughts are timeless.

Marry

"Children — (if it Please God) — Constant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, — object to be beloved & played with. — better than a dog anyhow.– Home, & someone to take care of house — Charms of music & female chit-chat. — These things good for one’s health. — but terrible loss of time. –

My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. — No, no won’t do. — Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House. — Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps — Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St..."

Not Marry

Freedom to go where one liked — choice of Society & little of it. — Conversation of clever men at clubs — Not forced to visit relatives, & to bend in every trifle. — to have the expense & anxiety of children — perhaps quarelling — Loss of time. — cannot read in the Evenings — fatness & idleness — Anxiety & responsibility — less money for books &c — if many children forced to gain one’s bread. — (But then it is very bad for ones health[19] to work too much)

Perhaps my wife wont like London; then the sentence is banishment & degradation into indolent, idle fool –

He then produces his conclusion:

Marry — Mary — Marry Q.E.D."

Amazing, isn't it? To actually write a list of pros and cons of marriage!

Infinite thanks to the BrainPickings team, who work hard to reproduce such age old gems. Do visit their website, it is the best thing that could happen to the Internet in the 21st century.

#DadTaughtMe: Father's Day Poem

Father's day 2016 is just around the corner. Here's a small poem I wrote a couple of years ago dedicated to all the fathers out there. 

From teaching you

how to ride a bicycle

to making you comfortable behind the wheels.

From teaching you

how to hold the cricket bat perfectly

to helping you sign your first cheque.

From teaching you

how to save coins in your piggy banks

to the long tax-saving lectures.

From teaching you

how to work hard during college

to encouraging you to take a leave and visit home.

From teaching you

to dream big in school

to motivating you to dare after graduating college.

Dad was, is and will always be

The greatest teacher of your life.

Tell us what all have you learnt from your dad?

#DadTaughtMe

You can share your comments below. If you love what I've written or want to just chat with me on any random topic on Earth, please follow me on twitter @itzkundan. 

Regards,

Kundan

The Butt Bomb

Note: The below described incident is a real fiasco that happened to me on a Monday morning at my work place. My Monday blues turned into Monday yellows. Read it to find out what actually happened. 

He was restless. So he had to go. And mind you, he had to rush. 

Four to five cups of Cappuccino and Latte in the first half of a yawn-ing Monday morning leaves some tiring work for the digestive system. The pressure on the hapless system is more if the Sunday was a late-night party. A lot of chemical reactions takes place inside it and the result is some fertilizer which unfortunately is too much for the body to handle. So ultimately, the brain asks the body to dump it.

So he rushed and reached his favorite lavatory, ultra-modern, studded with big mirrors and compartmentalized lobbies. Aha, “it is a luxury in India”, he thought. 

The jaguar advertisements flashed through his mind. Those lonely, dracula-type models hovering around those expensive water taps, bath tubs adorned the set-up. He was humming a song. He opened one of the doors and got inside. The lid of the commode was firmly closed. He always wondered that commode is such an unromantic name for such a sophisticated machine. 

Why can’t be it made sexy and appealing like- Butt sitter, Bum Kisser or something similar. Makes it more marketable, isn’t it? Anyway, the machine with two layers of lid and a bulging U-shaped stomach like design always scared him. To open the lids was always a challenge, not knowing what would you see ahead. But if you don’t open it, you won’t be able to dump! So courageously, he opened it.

And…

It was an unpleasant, treacherous, and monstrous sight. Just like any other human being, his reflexes immediately ordered him to press the flush button. He did it frantically and shut both the lids. Aghast, he returned from the terror spot. He pushed the flush button again. You can call it vengeance. It didn’t matter if the mammoth organic-inorganic heterogeneous yellowish-brown chemical was exited to its much-deserved heaven- the sewer. As long as the lids were closed, he could flush the chemical a thousand times and imagine it dying atom by atom. 

In that moment, he just wanted to destroy it without even looking at it. You can say he didn’t have the courage to see it in eyes and kill it. He banged the door and rushed in the lavatory lobby area. He washed his hands and face, just a psychological and physiological response when you see something that humanly disgusting. As he leaves the lavatory, the whirlpool in the machine had subsided. The earthquake was over. He just wished the chemical was all dead, bruised and flushed.

He hastily walks out of the often visited satisfaction chamber which millions of Indians don’t have the privilege to access. As he sprinted towards his work station, images of such a nasty bomb flashed again and again. He tried to be strong and meditate on all the beauty left around. Even smell has memory. He thinks to kill it by the ‘deodorant’ he fortunately carries in his bag pack. But all the while, he just wanted to meet that butt bomb terrorist who planted such a nasty chemical n one of the most visited places in any human inhabited dwelling. 

Now, this is surely corruption. It’s incomprehensible how low can one stoop to hide such quantity of lethal bomb under two awesomely designed imported Italian commode lids. Was it too much of an effort to destroy them? Definitely not! A gentle tap, a playful trigger of the shining flush button could have exploded that bomb (stool, dung, turd - just in case you want me to say it exactly), completing its destiny and giving it salvation. Was the water force inside that scientifically advanced machine very slow? Absolutely not! It's high-end, always functional. Thanks a bunch to the proactive admin department.

But whoever that scumbag was, he didn’t bother to do it. Mental corruption, seriously. It is these same scoundrels who put India on the list of most uncivilized countries. It is these same people who spit on roads and walk away sheepishly. If you find such butt terrorists around, kindly give them a punch or two so that next time you are there for unloading your self-inflicted garbage, you don’t have to shit about it. All you’ve to do is to sit and relax, thinking of all beauty around you.

P.S: Don’t think about this when having your dinner or lunch. :-p And, please unload your butt bombs safely. It can kill others.

5am, Local-101

In the compartment of the local train,

I don’t search for a soul to talk.
There is no one but
a stinking frail old man;
sleeping in the corner,
aside his garbage sack,
shivering in cold.

I prefer to be alone; unruffled,
Placid outside, agitated inside.
Clamors of the hanging lose metals
Strike the ear hard; cold winds struggle,
They penetrate my windcheater,
Barging into my ears.
Spine-chilling sensation
engulfs the body,
I remain unperturbed.
Looking aside,
The old man yawns.

The train halts at the next station;
people rush in to fill the vacuum.
They pounce on seats,
their first victory of the morning.
l know some of them by face,
They also know me,
But we rarely talk.

We only communicate
in the dialects of our eyes.
Yet we are unified
by our journeys,
dreams, tragedies,
lust, greed,
hopes, fears,
mediocrity, civility,
recklessness, masochism
prostates, mustaches,
odors, audacity,
multitudes of thoughts,
zillions of desires

The train comes to a screeching halt,
I see the old man collecting his belongings.
His odor diffuses into the compartment,
he is despised by everyone.
Abuses hurled, brows frowned,
He leaves the train calmly.

When I descend,
My eyes search for him
I could choose;
to forget him,
to help him,
I look at my watch, I was late for the office,
I postponed the later
May be, for next time……………

Finding Myself

It’s not a war

I’m fighting.

It’s not a path

I’m following.

It’s not sanctity

I’m searching.

It’s a deluge

Of monologues.

It’s an illusion

Of stories.

It’s a game

Of thoughts.

It’s a struggle

I’ve chosen.

It’s a pain

I’ve to go through.

It’s an oasis

I’ve to cross.

It’s a Me Vs Me

I’ve to face.

To tell a story

Never told before

Never lived before

What if you get an infinite paid leave?

Imagine you don't have your 9 to 6 job. I can see the grin on your face. Pardon my insensitivity, it is actually, not 9 to 6. It is 9 to 9 or even more depending on your luck and of course, the industry you are in.  So you don't have to sleep hurriedly only to be worried about waking up early the next day, preparing breakfast and packing lunch (if at all, you are able to do the sacrosanct  task of carrying home-cooked meals at work), and driving to your office in a traffic condition that deserves no introduction. Sounds great, isn't it? Wait, I've to add some butter to the bread. You don't have to go to work anymore. But you'll be paid. And paid the same you are earning now. Wow. Where was I till now? Me for Prime Minister. Me for POTUS as well.  By now you will be tempted to hastily bash me on my ridiculous, utopian and fantasy fairy tale-esque assumption, but hear me out now that you have read this far.  You have, right? 

Now with all the time in the world on your plate and the money you are earning, what will you do? 

Here's a possible list I could imagine. 

... Sleep all through the day

... Binge watch movies, TV

... Sleep more

... Read all the unread books lying on the dusty shelf.

... Clean the dusty shelf

... Then, clean the house

... Arrange the decor

...Browse gateways, weekend and otherwise

...Read more 

... Stay delighted all the day

... Sleep at random times
.... Hit the gym

... Smoke

... Drink

...Watch Netflix 

... Spend times with kids (if you have)

...Go and meet mommy
...Browse more social media

And so on and so forth.

It certainly looks like a wish come true. 

But what seems to be such a promising proposition will rarely last forever. The reason is embedded deep in our psychology. Just like our 9 to 6 jobs, other aspects of our lives can turn out to be equally boring and often exhausting. After the 10 day mountain camp in the Himalayas and another 10 days of meditation, you might start missing your home. And even more so, your work, in case you are a workaholic like me. The problem isn't the vacation or the number of days of you are on a leave. The fundamental issue is what we carry in our minds. The expectations that may be this leave will sort me from all work and life woes. Well, it won't. It may leave you on a high, refresh you, relax you and energize you but only if you are ready to leave your entangled thoughts behind. And  are really willing to enjoy the time out there. 


Also, I strongly believe that there is a reason why we do what we do. Yes, yes, EMI and paying bills is on the top list but once you have had money, what matters is the meaning you derive from your work. There is a whole lot of pride people attach to the work they do. If you can't fathom the private sector salaried people doing that, imagine the army guys, the creative guys, who really are into their work. A wise man once said - there are only two secrets to enjoy a work. Either do what you love or love what you do.

May be you start teaching underprivileged kids and you wish to do that forever. But that would be a work you have always wanted to do in your life but only discovered recently. Unlike the big shot software engineer or sales professional you are currently. Once you have found something that excites you, it is easier to bear the pain of office politics and digest the things in your profession or life that are beyond your control. A teaching job might not pay you six figures like a software gig would, but now you'll have a sorted mind. You'll have figured out, what's important for you and not for the world. 

For me, this fantasy of an infinite paid leave has always been my sweet dream. I always imagine I'd be the best person I can be, once I've all the time and money in the world. I'd write everyday for a few hours, become a disciplined monk, go running, cook my food, read books, sleep in the afternoon, and dwell on the deeper philosophical questions about life and death. And yes, the most fascinating of it all - get a ripped body, decorated by a six-pack abs. 

But history proves me wrong. Right from America's Got Talent to India's Got Talent to Bollywood to IIT entrance to Cricket, there are incredible examples of people who have done  what they wanted to do, and that too, in the same 24 hours, despite several human limitations and resource scarcity.  

So even an infinite paid leave won't do wonders, because the truth is- no matter how much time and money we get, if we are really not managing it well, and are not internally driven to achieve our dreams, even a whole life of vacations would be consumed like a few blinks of our eyes. 

You want to be a musician. Sneak a couple of extra hours from the 24 hours and practice daily.

Same applies to any profession.

You want a healthier and fitter body? Stop cursing the long, long office hours. Dance with your shoes on and wrap up the bloody work and move your ass to the gym. Remember, Chris Gardener (Will Smith) in the Pursuit of Happyness? He was bound to finish his work by a certain time because he had to pick up his son from the play school and rush to a first-come-first-serve home shelter? If he misses the bus by a few minutes, it meant he and his son would have to sleep in the subway or may be under the sky.

How well are you using your time? Do you plan your day? Regretfully, I haven't been doing it for a long time and I do realize, it has impacted my productivity and peace of mind. 

Do let me know your thoughts and trips and tricks (if you have any) on how to better manage the everyday.

regards,
Kundan

A Writing Prompt - Part 1

This piece is my effort to describe a scene as per the requirements of an assignment. 

Assignment:

Write a scene (in not more than 500 words) based on the following outline: Wife is at home. Husband enters. They have not been talking for some days. One of them tries to cajole the other. The other withdraws. The first one goes back to doing what he/ she was doing. The other comes to the first one and kills him/her. Please note that the scene cannot have any dialogue. So you can only write the scene-description.

The doorbell rings. The wife opens the door. He finds the husband standing there. He is drunk and losing control of his body. His shirt isn’t tucked in, the coat is in his hand and the tie is loose from its knot. The wife doesn’t make any eye contact with the husband, leaves the door half-open, and heads back into the bedroom. He steps inside the house, latches the door, hangs the key on the key hanger and sits on the sofa in the drawing room. He unties his shoe laces, takes out his socks as he glances on the wall-clock in front of him. It’s 11 pm.

 He looks toward the bedroom anticipating some response from the wife. But there is none. He nods his head in denial and moves ahead to freshen up. He walks to the wash basin, washes his hands and splashes some water on the face. He wipes his face down with a towel and looks at the dining table.  The table as usual, is neatly set for the dinner. He opens the lid of a bowl and smells it. He loves the aroma. He takes a morsel of bhindi-roti and tastes it. His attention goes to his wedding pictures hung on the wall. He gets closer to the wife’s photo and touches her lips with the morsel of food.

He now picks up the plate and move toward the bedroom. The curtains on the entrance of the room are drawn out. He moves the curtain aside and enters the dimly lit room. The wife is reclined on the bed and looking into her phone. As he enters the room, the wife sits back and keeps herself busy with the phone. She ignores his presence totally.  The husband sits by her side on the bed. He takes a mouthful of food and gestures her to eat it. The wife refuses to open the mouth. The husband tries again. She looks sideways. He again gives it another shot. But she now moves to the other side of the bed.

The husband gets impatient by this time. He keeps the plate on the table. He moves near the window of the room and looks out. His eyes are misty. The city is flooded with the night lights of a typical busy metro.  He can see a couple in one of the storey’s, in the high rise building in front of him, dancing together. He looks at them and smirks, pitying his situation. He gazes into the eternity from his window and she is typing furiously on her phone. Suddenly, his vision starts getting blurry. He turns back and stares at her, his eyes wide open. He tries to find a support to stand as everything fades from his eyesight. Swati is now looking at him. He falls on the floor like a log of wood, foaming in the mouth. As Ramesh lies dead on the floor, Swati types a message on her phone.

‘Game Over’ followed by three-four heart smileys.

The close up of her WhatsApp screen shows the name of some other man.

Back on the Road to Blogging

I've a confession to make. On a fateful day, four years ago, I hatched a plan to murder my blog. I wasn't happy with how my blogging journey was going forward. I rarely wrote anything. I wasn't happy with the fonts, design, template, layout and the domain name of my blog. I never picked a niche topic or specialized in any particular genre. I wrote on anything that popped up in my head. My posts were as erratic as my thoughts are. I never promoted or shared my posts on my social media handles. I was too wary of people laughing at my emotionally charged love poems and nostalgic childhood stories. I'd be honest. I was scared to be judged. 

Then the inevitable happened. I invested some money in redesigning my blog. Technically, it wasn't a bad move. I spent hours and hours on top blogging sites like copyblogger.com. And for a few weeks, it did feel like I had finally managed to crack the blogging code.  A refreshed look, a new domain with my name (kundanpandey.net) did bring a new lease of life to my blog. Just when I thought I had won half of the battle, my anxious mind was ready to play the game it was so skillful at. 


I had named my blog 'resonant perceptions' and I started thinking if it was good enough. Once a pain point starts itching me, especially in case of my blog, it has a cascading effect. From there, I started scripting the downhill journey of my blog with the same fervor as I had started to write its success story.  The more I sat and mulled over the blog name, the colors, the look, the topics, the genres, the more I got confused. 


A fairly occupying writing job (well, not so much writing, honestly) and a not-so-sorted-mind, cut me off from this platform. The enthusiasm was gone, dead and buried. In a fit of anger and despair, I started deleting my posts, assuming they weren't good enough. On a live chat with a technical support guy of godaddy.com, I deleted some wrong files and that my friends, was the last nail in the coffin of my blog. The blog, kundanpandey.net was gone in one click. A few thousand Rs burnt. 


This platform, my long abandoned first love had been there in the cyber space since 2007-2008. Yes, I got hooked to blogging in those days but then in a year or two, I realized this basic eBlogger platform wasn't good enough. Love was lost. A fall out was eventual. Very silently, I migrated to the sophisticated world of WordPress.Org and then to my own customized world of blogging. I had left my blogger site to die an uneventful death. A junk in the cyber world.  It kept floating in the time zone only to hit me recently while I woke up from a dream.

Oh, it was a horrific dream- a time-zone apocalypse. The past, present and the future were merging into each other and it was like Eris (the Greek Goddess of chaos) had landed in the city of dust, Gurgaon, where I currently live in.  I was covered knee deep in a dust storm. Any chance of escape was not possible. The harder I tried, the more dust wrapped me. 


The scenes from my past flashed before my eyes. Those blog deletions, the anxious moments. The hard copies of all the drafts that never got published turned into annoying dust monsters and hovered around me. The ink on the paper dripped like blood on my head. Before I could fathom the speed with which this torment was proceeding, I felt a sudden jolt that uprooted me from the ground and rocketed me into a different world altogether. 
Just like the previous scary world, even this new world looked unreal. 

There I was, lying on a hammock. The scary storm had subsided. The world felt in the state of perfect peace. The same kind of tranquil you would expect on an island marooned in the center of an ocean. And then I saw the sky glitter with the flood of light. There she stood, Harmonia (the Greek Goddess of peace, harmony) in all her calmness and sublime beauty.


I decided to move ahead and see if she was real. Before I could do that, a shrilling noise shook me. I woke up jolted. My alarm clock was back in business. I opened my eyes and stayed awake in the bed for a few minutes.


The only solace was the soulful song was from Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara that was playing in the background. Thanks to my brother, who has this annoying habit of switching radio every morning. 

The words were soulful, especially more so, after such a frightening nightmare. 

...Yeh jo gehre sannate hain

Waqt ne sabko hi baante hain
Thoda gham hai sabka qissa
Thodi dhoop hai sabka hissa
Aankh teri bekaar hi nam hai
Har pal ek naya mausam hai...

As I opened my arms to feel the sunny morning and the cool breeze, the same old philosophy dawned on me. There will always be some dust when chasing your dreams. That shouldn't deter you from pursuing what you want. 

Thoda dust hai sabka qissa, thode dreams hai sabka hissa. 

I looked up and thanked Eris, Harmonia and of course, Javed Akhtar Sahab. 

:)

PS. Ok, it's good to be back blogging. Hell, yeah.