moeny money money

What’s with egos. Jispa went to a swim meet today and the place was plastered with the face of this one character.
There were hoardings all over the place. The beach umbrella had his mug shots and of course the medals! That was too much. Medals? How much can you be vain? I guess it seems to be apolitical thing. Dear voter don’t forget the face. I am doing a lot of good stuff for you. Remember me! But I guess if he got some great pleasure out of getting his face plastered and I got a swimming contest in return, what do I care. It’s not like I have to vote for him. Sure. Smash it all over dude. This swim meet they were even giving out cash rewards and Jispa managed a butterfly bronze to get 500 bucks! She said she wanted to keep it as she thought she earned it.
Many years ago, after my tenth standard board results, I got what I remember as 200 odd rupees for getting a distinction. I got a cheque of the amount from the classes I went for. So I came home with the happy feeling that I had earned the money. Now I could do stuff with it. I even had a girlfriend I could spend it on! So I came home and asked for it. Mom refused. No way. You get your pocket money and that’s that. This does not belong to you. So in a fit of defiance, I too said then I don’t care about it. The cheque will remain with me. If you have power, I have power. I think then Dad entered the conversation. He had a chat with me. I don’t remember the complete chat but I remember these lines – me – “it’s my money, it rightfully belongs to me”. Dad – “well, then I can say, since I paid for the classes, then it rightfully belongs to me”. I don’t think I won that argument. And I think Dad managed to have a amiable solution to eth problem. I think I did get eh money in the end.
So Jispa said – I earned it, it’s my money. Haha! Sitting duck – ya if you have earned it then, it’s I who have actually earned it. What about the petrol and the other stuff to get you to swim. Who pays for that! Of course my tone was much more humorous than that of my dad’s. Awww. Jispa went. She knew it was in jest. Well she can have the money and quite frankly I don’t know if we will or won’t give it. Jasmine said – ‘aren’t you giving a treat to all your friends with your money?’ whoops!
Earning money… Today morning Jispa was telling me – you owe me 35 rupees for the guitar practice. Jasmine was like – you did not practice properly. Jispa replied ‘I did, and I am not charging for one session, so its ok’ Jasmine went “CHARGING? You are not charging, we are giving you like that for practicing.’ ‘OK ok. I am asking for my income’… “ok stop. I will give you your 35 bucks” I butted int o settle the argument.
Money is a funny object. Jispa has the money but has no place to really spend it. But it still gives her pleasure. She likes counting it, and like a true gujju, she loves getting interest on it. That is the best part. The other day in a fit of generosity on her cousin brother’s birthday she wanted to give him a cash gift. She started with around 600 bucks in the morning, but as we approached evening and the time came to actually give the money, the number dwindled to 200 bucks. “Why” I asked Jispa. “I did not like to give away so much money” she said. Always a tough call.
Probably we are ingrained to hoard. We like money, not so much as what it is doing for us but for what it COULD do for us. I think it’s a subtle but crucial difference in the way we see money. Hmmm.

think right

I was talking to Jispa the other day and we were talking about the flat that we bought. So I was explaining to her that to buy the flat I had to take a loan. That set off a series of questions which culminated in me explaining to her the concept of how a bank works. I explained how the bank borrows money and pays interest and how it lends money and charges interest and the spread between the two. It was good fun. She seemed to have grasped the same. It is always an interesting conversation when I have to explain to her stuff. I kind of love taking complicated stuff and translating it to her knowledge and understanding. I yearn for the day she will be studying her rocket science and explaining it to me in a language I understand.
I have always taken pride in being able to understand complex stuff as its basic level. Like I still remember my statistics class and being able to correctly remember and apply some of its core principals. Especially the concept of the bell shaped curve. In office when we do our rating we are supposed to follow the standard distribution pattern while rating teams. It is pretty stupid and ananl in the way we implement this stuff. I have a team of around 14 heads. Now the idiots will make me rate them and expect me to rate them while following the curve. So not more than an x percentage must be rated outstanding and a y be rated below that and a z must be rated adversely. It’s stupid. A simple error of taking what is true at macro and expecting it to work in a micro environment. The first rule that most students of statistics will tell you is that standard normal curves tend to be formed at minimum sample size of 40. And that too at that level you only have 80percent confidence in the sample. Lower numbers do not throw the curve distribution. Good HR practice would have dictated that at the time of appraisal the organisation must follow a standard normal pattern for grading. So the corporate duds have mandated that every team must follow the pattern. So even my 14 head team would need to follow a statistical model while statistically it does not hold good.
Duh. Also this would be true in an environment that does not have external stimulus and bias. My team is lean and small. It enables me to focus on the lower level and manage them. I constantly attempt to attack and weed out non performance. I do not let non performance be tolerated and linger. Hence as a whole I would have a bias that ensures a larger than normal head. My variance would necessarily be less and hence the model itself designed to paint the complete picture of the organisation would fail. But it is difficult to explain this to corporate India. We are adept at making the stupid error of taking the macro picture and expecting it to work at the micro level. It’s like saying that every branch of the mango tree must produce a variation in fruit that is consistent with the variance in the tree as a whole.
This shit happens when you sleep in statistic class. I loved my professor. He used to try and make a sincere attempt to get the stuff into our brains. I remember trying to sit at the first one or two rows else the lecture risked getting lost on you. In the break we used to run to the wada pav guy and get some wadas to eat along with the spicy chutney. That also was designed to keep you alert. He tried his best and I tried my best to understand him. It was a sincere attempt.
So after all these years while I forgot most of my statistics I have been fortunate to know some of the basic stuff and as I grow older I meet people and understand further application of the stuff I learnt. I might forget what the chi square test really is but I know enough to know that mere correlation is not equal to causation. The basics like mean median and mode is something that I remember and I think at some level it helps. Especially when the quanti researchers come in to pitch some of their products. It fries my brain when they talk but at least after the deep frying some thing interesting comes out from it.
So with Jispa I try and get the basic thinking right. It’s important that the thought process works correctly. A broad and correct understanding of the concept is at times more than adequate than a detailed analysis. Sure there will be several opportunities to dive deeper into a subject matter but for most occasions an understanding that helps you talk and direct the subject matter experts would be more than useful. This is not an excuse to be a generalist. In fact one of the biggest regrets of my training is that I have not taken the opportunity to be an expert in any one field. I have been a stupid generalist. I wish I would have taken a science or an arts stream that would have helped me direct my energies towards a specialised field. Even if I would have done my management afterwards, I still wish I would have done at the least an engineering. In fact today I wish I would have followed my dad and done my graduation in civil engineering. I would have gotten great pleasure to be able to construct a building or something. Even I might have hardly ever gotten chance to build one, the knowledge of being able to build one would have been lovely.
Talking about Jispa knowing about interest. Once while we were giving her pocket money because she played her guitar I got a brain wave. While she should know and experience the joy of getting and spending money she must also experience the joy of saving money and getting interest on it. so if she spends her money she know that she will not only part with her money but also the future interest on it. So we decided to give her interest. For sake of calculation her interest is set at 10percent per month. Oh dam what a high rate of interest. She is a pathaan. But it’s ok I guess. The other day Jasmine decided to give Jispa the money we got from selling old newspapers. On hearing this I jumped up. “what are you doing? I am paying ten percent on that every month.” Jasmine had a good laugh. “who told you to pay interest to your daughter?” she asked.
Oh dam. My wise ideas will come back to give me a bite on my bum.
For the record, in the middle her Nanaji gave her some 750 bucks for helping him in some origami class. So today while I was paying her interest, I was like wow...she had calculated interest at 98.7 rupees. Jasmine later told me that she calculated interest herself. She figured out how much the amount should be ... all jasmine told her was you will get 10 bucks per hundred. Cool. next time around she will understand for herself the benefits of compounding.
Jispa is also prone to asking some really simple questions. One question she asked Jasmine. “Mom, if you knew John Abraham in college itself (he studied in the same college, one year older), why didn’t you take his autograph then itself?”

Another one that I was super impressed by - she called me while I was travelling. She asked me “dad, I was reading about Jesus Christ (amar chitra katha) and I was wondering if BC is before Christa and AD is after death, then what is the period between?” Dam cool. My history teacher, Mrs. Annie Mathews had taught us this in the fifth standard. AD is not after Death. It’s Anno Domini. I remember that class very well. I told Jispa that it’s not after death, it stands for Anno Domini. But somehow she remembers me teaching her in some museum that AD stood for after death. I wouldn’t normally teach her, as this is my favourite GK question, but if Jispa was so sure, then I let it rest. “sorry, if taught wrong, but here is the truth.” I then went online and explained to her what Anno Domini stood for (the year of the lord) and that in all probability there is a miscalculation and Jesus was not born in 0 BC.

the new deal

I remember the first time I got pocket money. I think I was in fourth standard and it was a grand two rupees a month. I was so excited. It came from the blue, when our parents announced that we would now be eligible for pocket money. All three of us got different sums, and I being the youngest got the least at 2 bucks. I remember clearly getting that money and I remember think and counting, how many months will it take me to reach 50 bucks if I save it all. My pocket money reached 50 bucks a month till I was in the tenth and in college it was a grand 100 bucks a month. Here when I first entered college, it was the first time I was in town, roaming round with my new found friends. We all decided to go to Croissants etc, a bake shop. There I saw for the first time a chocolate croissant. I so loved it. Then I also tasted a cheese garlic croissant, yummmm. The chocolate one I remembered cost 11 bucks. Again my mental math told me that I could eat only about 9 a month. That’s it dude and that would mean no movies or anything else. Slowly my pocket money rose to hit 500 bucks a month till I finished my management education. 500 bucks was wow. That was good enough to support a lifestyle. Of course it helped that Jasmine was the rich one with her extra money coming in from tuitions she took for some neighbourhood kids. So she spent on us and I could make my pocket money go some way.
So I started with what I thought was a massive sum and ended with what I thought was a fair sum. In the middle I felt I didn’t have enough. I did not resent this or resent my parents for this. I was cool with it. One just simply did not have enough. We weren’t poor. We were gulf returnees who had saved up a pile. We had a cool house in a sky scraper but I guess the values of thrift that our parents wanted to put in us was a great thing. So while I had what I thought was inadequate I don’t ever remember me thinking it was unfair or unjustified. I was pretty cool with the money. If you don’t have , then you don’t have. No cribbing here.
But I still don’t like the pocket money concept. I don’t like a teen ager having to plan and save his money. These are his days to enjoy and spend, saving will come eventually. Sure the money is not unlimited but, the monthly pocket money concept is something I am not so cool with. It breeds more unfulfilled desire, which may come out in spending sprees when one is older I guess. But whatever, when Jispa recently was asking about pocket money, I wasn’t too cool with the idea. My first answer was that, we are with you all the time. Why do you need any money in any case? And when you want take it from us. Just let me know you want the money and I will give you. I had friends in school who got money on demand, sometimes I thought that was too much, but as long as you need to ask, what’s the issue. The tap control is with me. Jispa was not convinced. She wanted money for herself that she would spend on her own. Ok so that’s a problem. How do I give her a pocket money? Once a week, once a month? So I generally was chatting with her. She wanted once a week some sum. 10 bucks a week. That’s too low I thought. No point giving money that she will have nothing to spend on really. She also wanted to save some from that and put in her piggy bank. So you need enough to spend and save. If you want to promote savings, you need to have enough to save. So I put this question up on facebook and the overwhelming answer was to give some pocket money. And obviously the younger ‘friends’ voted for it. One other friend who is also a mother suggested that we must give money for doing chores around the house. Ok. so you don’t really get the money free, but you have to earn it.
Doing chores to get money was another bugbear for me. It’s quite a western concept. Working around the house is a family duty. You don’t need to get money to be motivated to work for the family and I hated doing the work and money would always be inadequate for what I thought would be great work. Ha. Plus I much rather pay the house help to do the work than get my kid to work for the money. I rather they work out of love or even guilt but not money. But this earning to get money got me thinking.
At the dinner table we were having a conference and we were discussing what to do about this conundrum and what must Jispa do to earn her pocket money. Till we hit a brain wave. Great. You get ten rupees a day if you practise guitar for 30 minutes. That’s it? Jispa asked. Yup that’s it. every day in the morning practise your guitar and you are eligible for ten whole bucks. That means you can make a cool 50 bucks a week. Jispa was super happy; she does what she likes to and gets PAID for it? ya. Get paid for it. But like the ultimate evil parent we too had sinister design, that are not too readily apparent. We too killed a dozen birds with one stone. To get 30 minutes of guitar time in the morning she has to - 1. Wake up on time. In other words her fussing to wake up must dramatically reduce from 15 minutes to 3. -2. She has to get in to the bath instantly. -3. She must finish her bath and brush in exactly ten minutes. -4 she must get herself ready after bath, wear her clothes etc without dreaming away. -5. She must sit to have breakfast. -6. She must finish her breakfast on time. -7 she must get up and wash her hands and face and get ready to get her hair combed. -8. She must then pack her bags and keep them ready – 9. She must then sit to practise her guitar at 6.55am which gives her 30 minutes to then wind up at 7.25 am to then wear her shoes, socks and run with me out of the house.
Believe me, these are the toughest 10 rupees she would ever make. She has been trying since the last week and she hardly managed one odd day in the middle a couple of days of 15 minutes practise. Though it was not a part of the deal; in fact it was a stated exclusion, I still paid her 5 bucks for 15 minutes. Poor thing. Today she got a tenner for the whole 30 minutes and another ten for the two intermediate ones.
The thing with being a kid is that no matter what deal you end up striking with dad, dad always wins. Somehow the parent gets it right and is able to see the hidden side of every deal. Man! Poor Jispa, she too is up against some huge odds. Every deal she makes with us, she ends up on the losing side. But at least look at the brighter side of things, I remember getting an incentive to help clean the wheat and help in the Diwali home cleaning, mopping and wiping. Here all she needs to do is strum a guitar. That’s it. Well... almost.