what a racquet

When the markets were doing very well, many years ago, one friend asked me a simple question. “what are you investing in these days?”. Ever since I was working in the broking or the HNI wealth advisory part of the financial world, everyone normally expects me to know a lot about investing. And not the boring simple, invest regularly in a mutual fund kind of investing, but the more exotic hot stock or hot deal kind of investing. To their utter disappointment, I knew nothing of the sort. I am not a great investor. In fact I can’t be even called an informed investor. My investments style is simple. Don’t.

I have been relatively lucky. Thanks to the firm where I work, I have given a decent sum of stock options. They used to be a decent sum, till I had to sell most of them to finance the new house I purchased. So being heavily invested in the options, I saw no great need to put more money in the share market. Also my job prospect is largely dictated by the share market and hence I would want to add any more volatility to my income and net worth. And now if you add the math and the EMIs that I pay on the housing loan… you are right. No money left to invest. So by default I have no investments to be made. But ya technically I am over invested. Opposites reconciling?

So the cool answer I gave to the question was “I am investing in my health”. The greatest investment I ever made was the gymkhana membership. That is one thing we use so bloody often. We are there in morning and evening, using or should I say squeezing the most out of our membership. Thanks to that I am living my sports dream. So now I carry stuff to swim, play squash, table tennis, badminton and tennis. The tennis racquet was there more out of hope than anything else and yesterday I was most pleased to start a little bit of tennis. So that completed almost the whole circle for me. Now that that to Jispa’s training we wake up everyday morning I convinced a few friends to wake up along with as well. They too come to the gymkhana and play with me. It’s great fun and it’s good for their health. I am investing my time in their health. It’s not a bad trade off. I get my bit of exercise as well.

Well that’s it. There is probably nothing remotely insightful in this blog. Just that I thought it was dam cool, that I now actively play all the sports in the gymkhana. Of course I consider billiards and the card room out of bounds from my perspective. I just loved the fact with tennis my circle is some what complete. Especially tennis. Till we were in Dubai in the third grade, I saw my dad play tennis in the club. I used to be the ball boy at times. He had a yonnex tennis racquet or something like that. Then he got me a junior tennis racquet. It was a Wilson – made of wood. I loved that piece. It was my racquet for me to play tennis. The tragedy of that racquet was that it was of no use ever. It never ever got used. I never played tennis with it. I could only feel it and smell it. We left Dubai soon enough and in India I never did get a chance to use that lovely racquet. I always wanted to play tennis. I guess in many ways thanks to that Wilson more than anything else.

I don’t a pic of that racquet and it’s been years since I last saw it, locked in mom’s cupboard, but here is a pic that I assume comes close enough. We must have bought it in 1983 or there abouts.

what a racquet

Jispa has been improving in her badminton class and her coach has asked us to get her a new light racquet. We went to town and got one for her. A yonex full graphite racquet. I thought that was overkill for her. But it cost around 900 (MRP 1500). I wanted to buy something cheaper but jasmine was keen on buying something nice. My theory is that her game hasn’t really reached a level where it would have made a difference and a slightly cheaper one might be the right thing for her. Whatever. But since there was hardly a price differential, we bought it nevertheless. Life has changed and how. When we came in from Dubai to Mumbai in 4th standard, we had a cultural shock of depravation. India had third grade equipment and epically in sports it was pathetic. My dad played sports in Dubai and we got along to India, some of his equipment such as tennis, TT and badminton racquets. In India mom went hyper and stored these racquets in the cupboard, safe from our eyes and hands. That Yonex racquet was only meant to see and feel, not play and spoil. I guess its still lying in her cupboard hiding somewhere. It must feeling bad that it has grown old without seeing too much sunlight. Even the tennis racquets have become obsolete now. One was a Wilson wooden frame racquet. She might probably get some cash from Sothbeys for it. I don’t think she ever realised that India would grow to be a land of relative plenty. The way these racquets are kept in a shop a metro, they almost look like vegetables. We used to remove the Yonnex racquet from the cupboard when mom was not at home, swing it around, smell it etc etc and put it back. I never dared to play with it. Jispa was excited on getting a new racquet. That too with a cover, full body cover. She was pretty happy. A new piece of equipment is always cherished and if used well and happens to grow old with you, it will be cherished even more. What an emotion. I grew up with very little of these. I felt happy and excited when I bought myself a pair of new gloves around five years ago. I loved buying my batting pads as well. Now they are old but I am at loathe to get rid of it. I have been rapped on it many times and they are in many ways my saviours. How can I discard them in such a hurry and simply but new ones? Sacrilege!

On another note, we saw this movie on Friday -“Road, movie”. This was before the reviews came in the papers. Any movie with Abhay Deol, would be an interesting watch. At least it would be different. Well this one was different. It had very nice characters and some amazing shots of the Rann of Kutch…. Er. That’s it. We did not understand anything more about it. It was an 11 pm show and Jasmine toh even slept through parts of it. We had a bunch of Gujju guys behind. They were probably on their bachelors’ night out and their commentary was constant and irritating. If they got a joke they would repeat it and translate it for their peers. Oh man, really tiresome. These movies must have a warning for these gujjus. So what’s the verdict on the movie? I don’t know. It was nice but weird. The next day I attempted to understand it through the critics, but sadly they were even more pathetic. I guess when you make such movies that supposed to be arty not but too complicated for any one to really understand, they tend to get such reviews. I guess no one wants to call the emperor naked for fearing of exposing their own stupidity. Like the TOI who gave it a good rating but said it does not have any story. I thought a story is central to a movie. Good locales and scenery is meant for a gallery release not a mainline theatre. But hell. Go see it. It is difficult to dislike but it is also difficult to fathom or comprehend. A real mixed bag.