The fish swam at ease
Letting the ripples pass
The grass swayed
In pace with the wind
Pebbles and rocks, big and small
Lounged lazily along the shore
The mountains stretched
Unmoving, in green hues
Above all, the clouds
Were pristine white
None knew boundaries
Except man

I saw this image on Sunday Mid-Day, and the connection was instant. Counting on the pen to work its magic. And the family confidently in tow. What follows just wrote itself. 

Hello friend
So happy to see
Another who lives by the pen
 
The same family of three too
Don’t remember the little one
Resting his sleepy head on mine
But can’t forget
Falling on the road
While carrying the older
 
Yes, she too had followed in hope
That the pen would feed us all
 
Look at all those people
They all see
What we have, what we can do
But who cares
Rarely does one stop and buy
What we peddle
 
When we sell one
We are pumped to sell the next
We know
What one pen can do for us
Do they?
 
You will make it one day
It is written in our destiny
The pen shall provide

There is a lizard on the other side of the pale curtain. It seems happy just holding on as the curtain sways.

The old clock ticks on, loud and relentless. The sound fills every gap in the banter and laughter.

He is at the head of the dining table, most convenient to reach on his wheelchair.
“Why don’t you make some tea?” he tells the maid. She is more than a maid. She was the chief help even when his wife was around. She took over as his prime caregiver after the wife’s death and an accident confined him to the wheelchair.

A doctor who has come from a distant city checks him out. He obeys the gentle instructions. Raises his hands. Tentatively at first, grimacing at the pain. As the pain eases, a smile breaks through his white moustache and beard. As the testing and relieving continues, there is unceasing chatter, a lot of good-natured teasing between the patient and the doctor.

The wheelchair handler is called in to understand the doctor’s instructions. Soak his legs in hot water before he goes to bed. As hot as, and as long as he can bear.

As the doctor departs, so does the delivery guy from a grocer, who had been inside, stacking up stuff.

The old man puts down his cup and resumes the story he was telling. Another trip down memory lane. Like the sun filtering through the leaves in a gentle breeze, dates and names are now bright, now in shadow.

The maid signals the guests not to make him talk until he finishes the tea. Else he would again forget to sip. Again, she would have to reheat.

He tells her to shut up and go away. She does just that. Keeping an eye on him but away from his eyes. She takes her time to respond and come to him when he calls her again. There is no malice. He is smiling. So is she, despite the sulk mask.

No one who has interacted with him so far is related to him. Yet everyone around in the community is his family, tightly bound.

By ownership, he ought to be alone in that grand old house. Someone or the other, from near and far, always ensures he is not.

He is wheeled out, shouting out instructions for yet another get-together in the evening. The dogs waiting outside can barely contain their jumps and wags of glee.

The clock ticks on as if urging the lizard to get a move on. It remains where it was.
​
Tomorrow, more will come. So will more laughter.

She chose hand surgery because she could perform that sitting, confined as she was to her wheelchair. The Sitting Surgeon would go on to give wings to many.

Dr Mary Verghese was keen to study obstetrics and gynecology. An accident shattered her dreams and left her a paraplegic. After that she underwent multiple excruciating surgeries so that she could get better at being a surgeon, who could not stand.
​
In Take My Hands Dorothy Clarke Wilson tells The Remarkable Story of Dr Mary Verghese of Vellore. Here are some extracts from the book that reveal what a struggle it was for Dr Mary to recover from two spinal surgeries.

​The [first] fusion operation was performed on March 14, 1955. Bone chips taken from her hip were inserted between five lumbar vertebrae, in order to effect rigidity.

[After the surgery] body encased in two slabs of plaster, either one removable, Mary was again placed on a revolving bed. Twice each day she was turned. In the morning, the nurses would remove the top slab and bathe her. Then, turning her over, they would remove the other slab and bathe her back. For two or three hours she was left lying face down. The back slab was then replaced, and the bed turned to leave her again lying on her back. The procedure was repeated in the evening.

It was for the hours of greater freedom twice a day, lying on her face, that Mary lived. Head taped and pillowed, a book lying on a low table below the open bed frame, arms resting on the table, she could read or study. Avidly she read book after book [including] volumes on the causes of nerve paralysis.

Immobile, widening horizons
Not that the longer periods on her back were wholly wasted. She used them to pray for other people and to strengthen her own spiritual life. She enjoyed the visits of her many friends. She shared the problems of students and nurses, listened eagerly to news of all the latest romances and even tried to promote a few.

Friends brought flowers every day, and one doctor even fixed a pot of blossoms under her bed so she could see it when she was lying on her face. Dr. Rambo, the American eye specialist, brought a travel poster of the Jungfrau and fastened it to the wall. 'You need something to widen your horizons,' he told her with a smile. 'This will help.' It did.

How it did! It stretched the walls to include unbelievable vistas. The pinnacle of whiteness was like a glimpse of heaven.

Reflecting life around
​Nurse Effie Wallace, as ingenious as she was practical, had attached a mirror to a bar over Mary's head, reflecting not only her face but the trays of food set on her chest, so she could feed herself normally, with her fingers. Even better, the mirror could reflect objects outside the window: the big tree, a bougainvillea bush, people passing along the path towards the leprosy clinic.
​
The second operation was for fusion of her lower thoracic vertebrae, utilizing bone chips taken this time from her leg. Back in her room, Mary began again the weeks of immobility and waiting: the imprisoning slabs of plaster; endless hours on her back; the two shorter periods of respite each day on her face, the open book on the low table beneath her, the pot of flowers a splash of brightness on the bare cement floor; the cheering visitors; the young nurses and student doctors dropping in for advice and gossip; the praying for the needs of others; the sounds of hurrying feet; the reflections of a tree, a garden, striding figures.

[Some years later, the aircraft was ready to take off as Dr Mary returned after her Fellowship at the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, New York.]

The doors were closed, the seat belts fastened. The great plane began to move clumsily towards the runway, like a bird out of its proper element … or like a human being intended to run on swift limbs but doomed to lumber on wheels. It came to a stop, shuddered as if in mortal agony, then with a roar burst its bonds, mounted upward into freedom. Mary felt a kindred surge of triumph. She saw far below a huge city shrunk to incredible smallness, a blue expanse dotted with toy ships, then nothing but sunlight and clouds and infinite skies. She closed her eyes in wondering gratitude.
​
I asked for feet, she thought humbly, and I have been given wings.

​These days there are so many World Days. Insert a word between World and Day and there! Not all those days matter to all. Except for some. Like today.

Today, October 8, 2022, is World Hospice and Palliative Care Day.

Palliative care is the branch of medicine that is about care beyond cure. It helps one live in pain-free comfort, with dignity, until death. And offers solace to the family that must live through the dying and beyond.

That may make more sense if you or someone dear to you is suffering. Or is dying. When the only hope left is for some quality of life (some peace, no pain, sufficient comfort, dignity retained) until life breathes. Quality of life is something that matters to all of us in every stage of life. Most so in the last stage.

I am fortunate to have two friends in professions that work to provide quality of life in different ways. Dr Priyadarshini Kulkarni is a palliative medicine specialist and the founder of Ease and Comfort. Lovaii Navlakhi is a certified financial planner and transitionist, and the founder of International Money Matters. 

What has money got to do with palliative care? Or with quality of life when you are in no position to earn?
​
We will let them answer. 

​Dr Priyadarshini Kulkarni
“I know a family that has just two aging parents at home. They have multiple problems and are totally dependent on others for every little thing. They prefer to be at home. Among an array of people employed to help them is one person whose only job is to be with them and keep an eye on them. This person has no training as  a caregiver. Yet, this help alone is costing them more than ₹50,000 every month. Imagine the total spend! How many families can afford that?”

Lovaii Navlakhi
​“When we think money, we tend to focus on the quantity. The more we have, the happier we feel. I think what is more important is what your money is doing for you. Is the quantity of money you have giving you the quality of life you want? That is why responsible financial advisors first understand what you want to do in life, before working out the most prudent way to invest your money to help you reach those life goals.”

​Priya
“Treatment of a major disease like cancer will drain a lot of money. As dementia progresses there will be an increasing need for constant care. It is not always about palliative or end-of-life care. As life expectancy lengthens, as more and more families turn nuclear, there is also an increasing need for independent, geriatric care. It is a long wait. That does not come cheap.”

​Lovaii
​“Insurance is important, but your health insurance policy may stop supporting you after a certain age. Your best bet when you grow old is your younger self, what your younger self wisely put away all those years ago.”

​Priya
​"​In most cases, the role of palliative care is to ease pain and provide comfort. But what often hurts the most is the loss of dignity. There was a very successful entrepreneur, who was once the king of his domain. He was now helpless, terminal. He wanted to know if it was possible for me to speed up the end. What was unbearable for him was to have his wife and daughter-in-law, the only family he had at home, take complete care of him as he just lay there. He did not want to be at the mercy of others. The problem was solved by handing over all care to medical professionals. Fortunately, the family could afford that. How many of us can?”

​Lovaii
​​“Parents are so eager to educate their children, get them married and set up a home for them that they start saving right from the time their child a born. What they forget is to provide for themselves. By the time they realize that, it is too late because the cost of care is always rising. They end up being what they never wanted to be—a burden on their children.”

​Quality of life can mean different things to different people. Even for the same person, it can mean different things at different times as life goes through its inevitable phases and transitions.

We do not want to talk of death. Nor are we comfortable talking about money with family. We cannot escape either, death or money. Between the two, why not plan the reality that we have more control over—money?

Palliative care helps you live as well as possible until you die. And it preserves dignity by respecting one’s life till the end. Financial planning can facilitate this, for oneself and for others.
​
Maybe it is time for a couple of name changes. Let’s change financial planning to life quality planning. And let us celebrate today as World Quality of Life Day.

Please visit 
World Hospice and Palliative Care Day 2022 (thewhpca.org)

​It is a long ride from the airport. The urban clutter and concrete begin to give way to frequent trees and occasional teashop isles.
Conversation keeps us both awake. He is happy to talk about his family (“my daughter will finish high school this year”) and point to some landmarks on the way (“this is where I used to work before I became a driver”).
Then we reach a road that is particularly scenic. Trees on both sides and vast green fields beyond. No other vehicle in sight. Beautiful! Peaceful!
​I suggest, “Let us stop here for some time.” There is no response. He seems preoccupied, a little worried even. I suspect he has even speeded up a bit.
Soon, we are at the hotel. I invite him to join me for lunch. Reluctantly he does.
As we eat, he explains. “From where you come, that road must have looked beautiful. Here, such roads can be dangerous. Suddenly, five or six people would emerge from the tall grass or from behind a tree. That would have been the end of both of us. It is so common here. Nobody can do anything.”
That explanation brings me back to reality. I am not here for sightseeing. I had insisted on meeting some of the beneficiaries of my client before penning a script for them. They had developed an app to help the poor (underprivileged in corporate-speak) invest and borrow.
The driver is grateful for the lunch and the small tip. “I will buy something to take home. And don’t worry, I won’t be taking that road when I return.”
No, he has not heard of that app. He thinks it is a joke. How can his mobile become his bank? 

A local representative of the client arrives later. He takes me to a village that can be accessed only on foot.
Alarmed by the warm welcome accorded to “the one who has come from the city”, I request the representative to please not bother with the introductions. I am here just to watch you at work. I am not a special guest. Please ignore me.
The meeting is about to start. Several women arrive, some of them carrying children. Most have their head and face covered. The men are at work or simply prefer to leave unproductive tasks like banking and technology to the women, so I would learn later.
I try to blend into the background. Not easy when you are the only one sitting on a chair. (Someone had procured it after seeing me struggle to fold my noncompliant legs, while bravely trying to sit on the floor, like the rest of them.)
A dog comes close enough to confirm this stranger is harmless. The cows and buffaloes on either side can’t care less.
The meeting progresses. Gradually I become friends with the accent. I notice something strange. The participants are all looking at me as they talk. Sitting right in front of them are two company people whom they already know well. They are here with mobiles and registers to ensure everything is in order. And the customers are looking at me, why?
Soon the answer is clear. I am the only one who is meeting their eyes and nodding sympathetically (“my son just wouldn’t go to school; we will need another loan soon; we took it all the way to the market but did not get a good price for our harvest”). The company guys are just too focused on their mobile screens, struggling with the poor mobile coverage in the area, ensuring their app captures all information right. They simply cannot afford to look up, meet eyes and chat.

​Meeting over, we are in the car again, headed to the next location. We stop at a small teashop on the way. Everyone seems to know my companions. But some of them also appear to be wary of the two.
“Many of them were swindled in the past and lost a lot of money. After that they don't easily trust banks. And definitely not a bank inside a mobile,” my friend whispers a quick explanation.
The owner of the teashop is not laughing. He had kept the previous week’s earnings in a bag in the shop. Last night, a rat had chewed through the bag and some of the money.
“I keep telling you, open a bank account and deposit the money there,” advises my friend.
“And lose all of it?” the shopkeeper replies curtly. Obviously, he is not likely to be a client ever.
I am again at the receiving end of questions and comments after the meeting concludes at the next location.
“Some woman from their company talks to me on the phone. I don’t understand her. She does not understand me. Is she for real?  Someone told me she is a machine. Is it safe to talk to a machine about my money?”
“Last time we trusted a mobile scheme, we lost all our money. Now, I don’t give my thumb print to anyone.”
“They keep advising us to save. How can we when we don’t have any money? The little money we have we use to repay the last loan. Then we take a fresh loan.”
“For these women, it is easier to take a loan. They try to save, their husbands come, beat them up and take away all the money. At least the money is safer inside the mobile.” 

I am back the client’s office in the city. They are gearing up for a twin celebration. They have got a fresh round of funding, a few more millions. During the party, they also plan to unveil their new user interface.
I am taken on a tour of the sprawling office. My guide spends extra time at the tech section where all the programmers sit. As they tell me about the finer aspects of the cutting-edge software, I realize there is a lot that I need to learn.
What defines success in their domain? How do they manage to tame fickle technology so that they can prosper by supposedly helping someone managing the cows far, far away also prosper?
As we go to the next section, I cannot help wishing that some of those tech wizards most of whom had not bothered to look up from their monitors during the hour I was there, would abandon their machines and go. Go to some of the villages they are working hard to transform, to enrich.
Go there. Just be there, watch and listen. Understand their simple code of life. Then get back to your complex coding to help everyone. 

Executive search firms are warning that companies persisting with a five-day work week may have to do with “leftover talent” as candidates may refuse to join or leave soon after.
Do we blame that virus again for this? Have all of us been spoilt by the commute-free experience of working from home?
When the WFH-WFO debate first hit the headlines, the virus villain was not part of the vocabulary at all. Instead, it was Marissa Mayer, the then new CEO of Yahoo who had garnered all the hits for abolishing the company’s work-at-home policy and ordering everyone to get back to the office.
Then, as now, what the headlines have missed is that I have been at home and productively working for more than a quarter century.
Then, as now, what really matters is not your location but if you feel at home where you work. 

​In my early days, entrepreneurship was a euphemism for glorious, uncertain, nail-biting unemployment. I would often land up in the office (he had one!) of a friend. I would pretend to have just come from a client meeting; he would pretend to be rushing off to another. After both of us got comfortable enough to shed our masks, the first question he asked was, “How do you manage to stay awake at home? I could never bring myself to leave the bed. That is why I splurged on this *&%#$ office.”
A young manager once sat me down to have a chat. When I told him I was not a management  graduate, he looked at me as if I had just crawled out of the coffee vending machine. Just to make him comfortable, I assured him I came to office only two days a week, that too for a few hours. “It is just not professional,” he burst out.
My job of writing used to place me in offices full of interesting people for several hours a week. They are rarely so accommodating today. But I am fortunate to be still working with some very intelligent people (some of them are so good they reject my work and then offer tea to make me feel better).
I must understand all dimensions of an issue before I can attempt to resolve it for my client through my writing. That conversation used to happen in the office or, more commonly, in the conference room. Now, we meet on the monitor.
As for the actual writing, I have always done it at home. Which means I have always spent more hours at home than in various offices. Which makes the housemaid throw deadly looks at the leech shamelessly living off his poor wife, who must trudge to work every day to keep the family alive and pay the servant’s salary.

​John Sullivan thinks I have the mix right. That old New York Times report about the Yahoo missive quotes this professor of management at San Francisco State University, who runs a human resource advisory firm. “If you want innovation, then you need interaction,” he said. “If you want productivity, then you want people working from home.”
Now you know what I mean when I insist I am “innovatively productive”.
Susan Cain writes in her book Quiet what collaboration meant for Steve Wozniak, the co-creator of Apple: “The ability to share a donut and a brainwave with his laid-back, nonjudgmental, poorly dressed colleagues—who minded not a whit when he disappeared into his cubicle to get the real work done.”
No client has yet shared a donut with me. They have been generous with the brainwaves, though. I lug it all and disappear into my cubicle—my home.
In the same book, Susan Cain talks about Pixar Animation Studios, where “the sixteen-acre campus is built around a football-field-sized atrium housing mailboxes, a cafeteria, and even bathrooms. The idea is to encourage as many casual, chance encounters as possible. At the same time, employees are encouraged to make their individual offices, cubicles, desks, and work areas their own and to decorate them as they wish.”
So, it is about creating little spaces where you feel “at home” in the office. That is exactly what I have been saying. You need a prudent mix of efficient home and homely office for optimum productivity.

​I recently shared this idea with an entrepreneur, making it sound as if I had thought about it all by myself, well before time, even before the virus.
This company was among the many hit hard by work-from-home while their customers all seemed to have gone home.  
When the skies cleared a bit, they experimented with a smiling come-to-work-when-you-can, later switching to a growling you-better-show-up-or-else. They went on to lose a bunch of people. Now they use work-from-anywhere-but-please-work-for-us as their prime recruitment strategy.
That reminds me. I have to prepare a presentation for them. I will start on that as soon as I finish chopping the vegetables. Ever since my wife restarted going to work, our maid has adopted a may-come-may-work strategy.

​Rani was 11 or 12 when an earthquake destroyed her home and family in a small town in north India. One year later, after he collected the earthquake relief money from the government, her uncle, the only other survivor, kicked her out.
Rani landed in Mumbai, where the people of the big city and their ways made her uncomfortable. Finally, she reached Pune and found employment with a family.
She became the full-time caretaker to the old woman of the house. They forged an affectionate bond. The old woman promised Rani better days and a better living. Rani’s prime years passed her by as she lived for her dreams.
Many years later, the old woman died. And Rani was back on the streets.

​She found a job at a school. After some years, she started working at the home of the head of the school.
When her bleeding and the pain in the abdomen did not ease, her employer took her to a government hospital. The diagnosis: cancer of the cervix, malignant and very advanced.
Her employer then brought her to what Rani thought was another hospital. At the time of admission, she reassured her employer, “I will come back and work as soon as I get better.” Her employer snapped back, “I never want you to come back.”
The palliative care centre admitted Rani as a destitute.

​As the pain subsided and she started feeling better, Rani did not know how to deal with the attention she was getting. The nurse often found her sleeping on the floor at night. “The bed makes me feel like a queen. I am more comfortable here.”
Now that she had a new family, Rani suddenly became a child and started making fancy demands. Vada pav, puri bhaji, lassi and Coca Cola were among her favourites. “And please don’t get those from the canteen, buy it from outside.”
The raging cancer would not let her keep anything down. One bite and she would throw up. One sip, and she would apologetically close the bottle and keep it away, to try again later.
“No more fancy food; just eat what we give you,” the nurse said in mock anger. Rani laughed; the nurse helplessly joined in.
The attendant gave her a bath, combed her sparse hair, and tied it into a thin bun. The security guard came with a flower. Would it look nice on her hair?
One night, Rani died peacefully. She was 70.

The employer sounded relieved on hearing of the death and reaffirmed that the institution was free to do what they thought fit.
The institution had a signed document that authorized them to do what they felt right with the destitute before and after her death. The police had endorsed the document.
The crematorium got a copy of the document too, along with the death certificate and a copy of the driver’s license of the person who took the body there.
They all took care to make sure they would not be in trouble later.
As for Rani, after some 50 years of serving others and 20 days of living for herself, she did not care anymore.

“Have you even had sex yet?” my professor asked me, shocking me into silence. There was a sudden hush around us.
We were at a café just below the bank where I worked. And in that office, that very morning, my boss had advised me to reconsider my decision to quit. “You must remain constantly bored and frustrated. Only then will you do very well at your hobby. You need to keep this job to be a better writer.”
The professor had surprised me by dropping in “just to see you busy at work.” He looked amused as he watched me busily stamping countless documents, stapling the papers the typist passed on to me and fetching files. My boss kindly gave me permission to step out of the office to have coffee with the professor. “But don’t take too long. People may need files.”
The professor was the one who had discovered the writer in me during my final year in college. And he took the trouble to stay in touch after I graduated, reading and commenting on every masterpiece (so I thought) I wrote and snail-mailed him.
We had barely sat at a table when he pulled out a familiar looking piece of paper from his bag. It was the poem I had sent him last. I was secretly proud of that scathing commentary on the state of the nation, with lines like “blood of our rapes flowing on the streets.” That was precisely the line he had read out before asking the question that had silenced all conversations in the vicinity: “Have you even had sex yet? And you write of rape and blood.”
"Write about what you have experienced," he advised. “I am not asking you to go around raping and murdering. Write from within. You have the potential to be a writer. That does not mean you can pass judgement sitting on a pedestal. Experience life. Meet people. I am glad you are leaving the bank. Don’t give up writing. Write honest.” 
I have forgotten whether we had tea or coffee. But that meeting came back in painful detail when I recently read the warning, “turning play into work can really dull the joy.” Should I have listened to my bank boss 40 years ago?

A course in journalism and a stint in a newspaper told me that being a writer was not the same as being a journalist. In fact, the day I joined after chucking my bank job, the Chief Reporter put a fatherly hand across my shoulder and said, “You look like an intelligent boy. How could you make this mistake?”
Then came the job in corporate communications. It was a wonderful opportunity to talk to everyone from the worker to the director for the newsletter. Everyone applauded every issue, my creation! Except my boss. Until the day he exploded when I got someone’s name wrong and discovered it after the issue was printed.
“You think you are a great writer? Hah! You can’t even get the basics right!” The writer took two steps back; the employee responsible for carefully and correctly projecting the company’s image stepped up.
The tie was the memorable aspect of the job that followed—with a PR agency. I do not remember doing much beyond scanning newspapers, sending clippings to clients and writing endless press notes. It was a struggle to knot the tie correctly in the cab on my way to the next client meeting, especially when it was a short ride.
I got rid of that tie and left the job soon. I felt very brave and liberated when I decided to be an independent writer. It didn’t take long to miss the regular salary flow. God! When did everything get so expensive!
“You mean to say you sit at home, write and people pay you?” my mother asked. “Why don’t you admit you don’t have a job? Your father is not there now, and you have your own family to look after,” she sighed. She was probably wondering where she had gone wrong in my upbringing.
“My father was doubtful if an editor would be able to support me, when I chose you,” my wife confessed. It didn’t help that my first son had already started school and another child was on the way when my wife decided to pluck that material memory from yonder.

The tie went away for good but I did end up wearing many hats—copywriter, scriptwriter, medical writer, technical writer, web writer, storyteller, coach. Until I was commoditized as a content writer more recently.
Were there any lessons that could be bulletized on LinkedIn?  
Maybe it started with my professor, but the lessons have not stopped coming.
“Your sentences are long. Very boring.”
“You write very abruptly. Too many short sentences. Almost impolite.”
“Why do you use such simple words? You are writing the Chairman's blog."
“Can you use this word in the headline? I like this word!”
“Very moving script about the farmers. Now, get moving and change it fast. Put in some charts and figures. We need this to get funding. Not win an Oscar.”
“You write so easily and effortlessly. Why do you want to charge for it? After all, you said you enjoy it, didn’t you?”

Carys Chan, research fellow at Griffith University’s Centre for Work, Organization and Wellbeing, quoted in this article warns that monetizing one’s passion project can jeopardize its appeal, but “if the gap between your passion and what you’re actually good at is small, or they are aligned, that can obviously be a great outcome.”
That sounds very wise. The simpler formula I have learnt to apply is to enjoy what I write for myself. And I equally enjoy what you want me to write your way, provided you pay.
​
I am sitting in front of a potential client. We are in the office of a common friend who had brought us together.
He has just finished running through a crowded Excel sheet that began from all the products he was planning to launch within the next year and went on to list all the social media posts he wanted on multiple platforms within the next two weeks. It is obvious he has been tutored by others as to what he was expected to do.
I let him finish. Then I gently helped him close his laptop and pushed his waiting tea towards him. While I took a pull at mine, I asked him where he was from and about his family. My questions were in a language both of us were more comfortable in.
He sat back, let out a breath, reached for his cup, took a sip and smiled. “I am a farmer,” he said.
​
I love my job.