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✍ My Life so far- in brief ☣

       I was born on April 11^th, 1961 at Trivandrum, presently known as Thiruvananathapuram which is the Kerala state capital. When I was less than a year old my parents took me to Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, where I was to spend about 25 years of my early life. My father worked in an American Company by the name of Picker International then. My father whose native place was Chowara near Alwaye, in Kerala had graduated from St Thomas College, Thrissur and then went on to study at Calcutta as well as to earn a living to complete a period of around forty years of his lifetime. My father is no more having died of Alzheimer’s disease and glaucoma some years back.

       I studied at South Point School while residing with my parents at Tollygunge and then at Golpark near Gariahat Road within the Kolkata city limits. My school life was one of confusion for myself as well as to my teachers and I still find it hard to figure out as to what I was doing there. For me it looked more like a struggle and to compound it an incident took place when I was in my sixth standard. In those days like most of the school boys of my age I had a great love for cricket and would spent better part of my day playing the game. It was characteristic in those days to play cricket out in the middle of the street whether shine or shower. If it was a hartal then it was all the more wonderful. I had joined the gang of elders who played cricket and for some reason or the other when one day one of the seniors couldn’t make it and so they took me into their team. One day they had arranged a match to be played on the ground near the Dhakuria Lakes.

      I vaguely remembered being called into bat as the eighth or ninth person and was sitting on the wooden bench near to the boundary trying to put on the pads on my legs. One of the odd things in this match is that for some reason an old ball that is heavier and used for hockey was being used instead of the deuce ball. As I was fumbling around with the tiny clips and belts the guys around where simply throwing the ball in the air and catching during the time gap. It so happened that one of them threw the ball up in the air and before I knew and heard their yelling sounds of warning the ball had hit my head and collapsed on the grass below. They poured water on my face and drenched my whole body for I had been struck right on the skull. It later transpired that the fracture was not at the centre or the Modula oblongata which would have meant that my case was closed once for all.

     Then came a couple of years of medication as the specialist doctors at Kolkata told my parents that the clot that had formed had successfully diluted and that I am out of danger and that there was no need for any surgery. We were thankful enough but for some reason or the other I had some memory retention problem in those days and even years later when I went to college. This made me rather dull outwardly and although I had played games I generally lacked a confidence and withdrew to myself like an introvert. Yet I was quite happy enough for I had very few friends and kept the rest as only acquaintances. Rather astonishingly it opened the door for reading and scribbling and frequenting libraries where actually what one read or retained in the memory hardly counted so long as the enjoyment of reading and immersing in them within those moments were by and large quite heartening and ecstatic. Of course, it was the usual light stuff of which I had a penchant in those days and sufficiently helped imbue some positive energy within me. I read anything that the Ramakrishna Library of Dhakuria lakes had to offer initially it was the children’s section and later the larger adult section. I do remember having read many novels several times in order to keep it in memory and rarely complained about this and took life as it came by. It was after school that my memory became significantly improved and I could retain a lot and even had close relations with public and private libraries whichever place I went. Even to this day I still do not have the fairest ideas as to why it improved, but I believe that it was due to my positive spirit. Yet even after my college I tried to come to terms with my own mentality that behaved somewhat erratically quite infrequently though. 

      I joined the City Group of Commerce evening class which was situated a stone’s throw from my house from where I managed to get my degree under the Calcutta University Syllabus. I never did try for any other course as I always felt that getting a job ought to be my first priority and the evening class helped as I joined as a trainee with a Chartered Accountant’s firm in Central Calcutta. Here, I got some of the best experience in auditing, accounts and tax matters. During my days in college I got acquainted with a friend and along with a relation of mine I was introduced into the world of literature both Indian and English. I soon started reading serious stuffs too and brought home books from the second hand sellers as well as the libraries. In the meantime I had sent some of my scribbling to different magazines and luckily accumulated a lot of rejection slips. Why luckily you might ask. Well, today I am quite happy with the realization that those writing even though had earlier sent my thoughts soaring with ecstasy would have hardly convinced any sane editor. Hence, it was indeed a blessing that these rejected manuscripts were kept with me for sometime to be thrown and burned away later.

      During my school and college days the crowd in the classroom consisted of multicultural groups and the majority of them from North India with a significant number from West Bengal of course. There were in fact, Bengalis, Punjabis, Gujaratis, Marwaris, Assamese, Marathas, Tamils, Kannada pupils, two or three Keralites, and many more from the Hindi belt. Hence, we talked in English, Hindi and Bengali inside or out of the class rooms. My own mother tongue was confined within the four corners of my house only and that too with a generous sprinkling of English, Hindi and Bengali. To make me identify my Kerala root, my father and mother enrolled me in one of the Malayalam school run by a Malaya lee Forum there. Here, the classes were held for a couple of hours and on a Sunday only and we all loathed the same when we could have easily played around as it was a school holiday. A couple of teachers were imported from Kerala and the classes went with some hiccups as sometimes we didn’t turn up and sometimes the teachers didn’t. In any case we had converted the classroom into noisy unruly place with our shenanigans. Our Malayalam classes soon ceased or it seemed so after a year or so and we all went about our own ways forgetting all the valuable lessons our teachers had imparted upon us quite conveniently. Of course, there were these mainstream courses and happily the parents of Malaya lee children didn’t insist upon us to continue it as they too were preoccupied with their work besides forming a firm opinion that their children should have understanding of the local and national languages apart from English as then it would be a sure winner in the job market.

    It was during college days that I developed a passion for serious literature due to the influence of people and surroundings as Bengal was basically a literature centre irrespective of the area of studies one was involved in. Bengal was the hot place of Indian Renaissance and having had a turbulent history with continuous struggle with the British Empire it had spewed forth innumerous poets, writers and essayist and social reformers. Since, most Bengalis proudly exhibited their reverence for the writers and intellectuals from their own state; it was quite natural that I too somehow got to read some of the books then, mostly translation of English, from a friend as well as relation of mine. There is no doubt that West Bengal had more books per square feet area than any other city or town. And College Street with its famous stretch of second sales books of all kinds was surely a wonderland for those who loved books but would like to get them at cheaper rates.

Restless and a mental drift

       I was then reading all sorts of books with a preference for English translated works and later on English literature. The books were myriad types that my hands could lay upon during those days. It could be anything from Rabindranath Tagore’s poem to Gandhi’s or Nehru. During my college days I also took a slight tilt towards spiritualism and would frequently go to Ramakrishna Ashram and other places of worship along with a friend of mine. Swami Vivekananda books were indeed revealing and so did Karl Marx in sharp contrast. However, I got disillusioned by Marx and went on to believe that freedom of mind can only be had through freedom of action. But authors like Leo Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Dostoevsky got me thinking from different angles about economic and social life in general. In any case my memory retention was better and got even better in later years.

     The college lectures were quite fruitful enough in imparting a steady flow of ideas about the economic system that faced India as well as the five year plans that were implemented. My liking for accounts perhaps got me thinking about the economy from a business man’s perspective as well the influence of books that I had started to read from the library. These were mainly books based on American dreams and I was too engrossed about different life and struggle of Indian, American and European business man. My reading books like the biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and Roosevelt influenced my thoughts a great deal and I started believing that business wasn’t after all a nasty thing as the leftist in Bengal wished to portray then. Besides, many of my classmates were the sons of successful business men and were well known for their philanthropy too. The truth is that in Bengal you always belonged to the extreme sides and never a moderate and even if you were nobody would consider you as such. In sharp contrast in Kerala where there are as many millionaires on the leftist side of politics as there are on the rightist wings.

      It was during my college days that got to know of the Lyons range where the Gujaratis and Marwaris would enthusiastically deal in equity and call it there ‘satta bazaar’. The various doses of information relating to quick bucks in equity market as well as the state of art of enterprise and take over of companies in real life made me an enthusiastic entrepreneur in my vicarious life of dreams. And so did the gush of literature and books that followed including biographies of Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Paul Getty, Howard Hughes, and Aristotle Onassis and also read tit bits of our own Jameshdji Tata, J.R.D. Tata, Birlas, Mallyas and many others. I however was depressed by the Homestead steel battle in the US where the private guards of Andrew Carnegie shot down a few protesting workers. However, due to the steady stream of information I too was convinced enough that I would turn into a millionaire and give the whole lot of them a real run for their money. But unfortunately all these remained only in my dreams and would again be shifted by another gush in my thinking pattern. I remember having written my own short stories of millionaires who for some strange reasons were bent upon killing one another and did less and less of business. Such writings are no more in my possession or otherwise I would have been doubly sorry for life if ever they had been printed.

        Movies greatly influenced my behavior then and I even wondered whether I should become a movie star or a writer and would air my opinions among friends and acquaintances and extol virtues of such and such stars and compare them with the dull drab life of a writer. In fact, I went to most of the Hindi movies as well as the English movies where there was enough action. Soon the writer in me receded temporarily and I remained only an avid reader of books, magazines and newspapers. However, after a few years of service with the Chartered Accountants firm, I got a job as a trainee at Madras now known as Chennai and I left Kolkata for good save for the fond nostalgic memories that I had.

       At Chennai my life was fine as well as sorrowful. In fact, I never got properly adjusted to the water or the climate of the place.  I fell ill frequently and it was quite natural for the rest of the staff to see me bedridden every four months or so in the company quarters. But apart from sudden bouts of malaria, high fever and other symptoms, my stay there was quite an experience as I came across wide spectrum of activities like mining, manufacturing, trading, exports, share trading and agencies works. And I really learn the financial side of all these and put in great efforts as the work was indeed rather heavy as the Marwari group were tough task masters. Yet when there was holidays there wasn’t anything much to do for me for apart from another one person or sometimes two persons in the huge living quarters, I was quite alone. I would go to mount road where all along the straight road where cinema theatres lined up. Some buildings had two to three different halls running different pictures in those days. This time around I even added a few Tamil movies too into my routine. When I felt bored, which even to this day I rarely do, I would read books. Perhaps this was the main reason as I was quite happy with myself and got confused with companions around me except for very selective people.  I did smoke on a few occasions, took a few sips of hot drinks rarely, but was never an enthusiast of neither either nor any drugs whatsoever. In fact, a good early morning breakfast and some good reading from the newspapers and books were sufficient for me to get me going for the rest of the day. The only time when I was in really bad mood is when my bosses get angry over trivial things and show out mistakes which haven’t been made by me deliberately. When I was alone inside the large building that consisted of the office as well as the guest house I would enjoy reading novels like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Stephen King, Alfred Hitchcock and other mystery and ghost stories and get really thrilled with my adrenalin rushing in and out of my system. During day time the same stories are not half as thrilling. So if you are depression prone then you can take this as your medication.

        During my stay at Chennai I had solid friends all of whom were my colleagues and they were indeed a myriad crowd. Both the male and female staffs were generally in good terms with me and I got along pretty well. There was a geologist who looked after the mining operations of the company and was quite enthusiastic in listening to him especially on his subject knowledge about geology. He showed me lots of diagram and books about earths crusts and lectured about plate tectonics that I was stunned. In addition to this I made friends with lab guys and technicians and learnt a lot about the fundamentals of physics and chemistry which I hardly cared for during my school days. To tell the truth, I became largely self taught than what the academic classes taught me. This was mainly due to my increasing curiosity about different subjects and the interest that I gained over a period of time that eventually made me write about serious economic matters later on in life. In fact, what little I learned from college classes wasn't enough to get me to think ahead but mainly due to the ground realities that I often came across during the course of erratic career. 

        There was another senior person in that company whose son was majoring in mathematics. He showed me a plethora of calculations that looked double Greek to me. His son and I became fast friends and he would extol the virtues of the Indian Greats like the Aryabhatta, Bhaskara, Ramanujam and several others and was then inclined to believe that people of Tamil Nadu were more biased to science and technology than literature. In any case I wasn’t to be witted out for when they asked me about my work and I instantly produced a whole lot of accounting works and stressed more on the difficulties and the difficulties of double entry principles and the preparation of trial balance and the balance sheet. So awed where they at my work in the company that in spite of the exaggerations I had every reason to believe that they would have surely thought that their great mathematicians were peanuts before this. But that they influenced my thoughts would only be an understatement for I don’t know how long I became an ardent science enthusiast.

     In short my discovery of the world of which we all are a part of astounded me then and ever since.  I got a few books to understand things further. What I never learned in school was revealed to me through my own selection of books. There was a book by a Russian author on Atomic Nucleus, The Mystery of Earth’s Mantle by another Russian author, ABC of relativity by Bertrand Russell and several others science books that gave me some insight about the majestic universe. This was to be followed with sporadic reading of science fiction which started with Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World, novels by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke’s and Ray Bradbury as well as Dr. Who series and some others. I had already read Jules Verne’s’ books yet this time around I was fascinated by everything that was science. In the Brave New World I got to understand the naked truth of crass commercialism and the art of perfecting everything. Even names of the people didn’t count and were categorized into Alpha, Beta, and Gamma just like the chaste system in India. And the multipurpose tablet called Soma which can be used as aphrodisiac, birth control pill; medication to almost any disease was a great read and pondered over the bleak future of humanity from the point of view of this great novel. Science made me wonder and still do not just about our magnificent universe, but the realization about the apparent insignificance and partly inconsequential reason of human existence. 

       Chennai was also a place where I came to understand the greatness of Indian culture and also the East Asian tradition and read several books and became slightly spiritually inclined too. During my casual reading habits I came across translations of Asian cultural books including Japanese. Later I read some of James Cavell’s books like Shogun, Taipan, King Rat, and Noble House that gave me an insight into the Samurai system of Japanese. It was at Chennai at the age of 26 years and after that I started with the alphabets and short stories of Malayalam of which I hardly thought much during my stay at Calcutta except when speaking to family members or friends of the same society. Within a few years I was able to read the newspapers and converse far better in pure Malayalam and have steadily progressed since then. Luckily for me there were few books and staff who could encourage me in my self study. Here while working for the company I also got my MBA diploma with the company sponsoring it. It wasn’t the certificate that really counted as much as the undying enthusiasm for the subject.

Life in Kerala

I left Chennai when my father met with an accident and I became a little homesick too. I was of the opinion that Kerala was a wonderland and was horrified to see it was so long as you worked in Gulf countries and brought in some money. Otherwise, for job seekers like me then it was a real horror. There was nothing that really counted as worthy of attention except the Government jobs and all businesses if they were to be called businesses flourished only in some tiny discreet pockets of the tropical state. Everyone around seemed educated enough to take the plunge into Gulf in whatever capacity so long as they could earn which wasn’t a bad idea and unlike other parts of the country, Kerala was much well off with urbanized spread and having comfortable standard of living. There wasn’t any poverty as such here. You might have asked why I too haven’t taken to Gulf like all other Keralites. Well, the fact is that I wasn’t quite enthusiastic about it and thus suffered some of the most trying times in my state. Although my passport had long expired and I have no idea what happened to it, even to this day I haven’t visited a foreign country nor have travelled by plane. This means that even when I had the money I didn’t. Once, myself and my wife planned one of those packaged tour to Singapore, but for some reason or the other (not finance), we never did try apart from the oddest fact that we both never had a valid passport. This is in sharp contrast with the populace here where your auto rickshaw driver must have travelled twice, the milkman having retired after a lucrative three years in Bahrain or your neighboring shopkeeper who might likely tell you about his plans for the sixth visit to Saudi Arabia. Or there might be stunning cases like the nearby tea stall enthusiastically serving the tea to his customers. Ask him and he would smile and tell you that he is simply doing it to while away his time with his tiny hotel attached to the sprawling bungalow with a couple of cars in it for him and his family. He too surely has served may be a couple of decades in the Gulf. In sharp contrast in Tamil Nadu, the owner is likely to stay in a make shift shelter while attached to that would be his sprawling and buzzing workshop or firm.

     As I was peculiar person by the Kerala standard and I simply stayed put by frequently changing jobs as and when I wished thoroughly fed up with the industrial climate existing in the State except of course for Gulf money and the resulting glitter. In fact, Kerala looked more like a large gaudy multiplex with relatively less potential for employment. Although I quickly got on to a new job the moment I hastily left the previous I was having doubts whether to stay or go off to other states. During one of these occasions I got married and I stayed on. My wife, Malini, too started to work and both together thought of building a house in the plot of land received from my mother at Thrissur. Meanwhile, my reading and writing went on in full swing, the latter which was mainly confined to my diaries and numerous notebooks except for a few published pieces. In other words, I had already come to a sort of conclusion during my stay at Chennai that trying to earn a livelihood by writing would be a disaster in India as very few writers could live on what their writings produced.

     The house which myself and my wife constructed was done in bits and pieces and not at one go for we had very little finance then. So unlike the rest of the Keralites who would hand it over to a civil engineer and forget all about it till the time when the key is to be handed over, I did some calculations and both myself and my wife (an accountant in a private firm), quickly came to the conclusion that we can never do it at one go. The plot of land belonged to us that I had received from my mother’s side and we first laid the granite foundation and left it as it is for a year. The plan was simple and at the outset I had decided that there would no upstairs as the cost of building a house was prohibitive in the State. In order to cut cost to the minimum possible I got the same designed by a civil engineer, got the requisite sanction and started on the project without resorting to loans the latter would cut down costs in the long run. The whole process of construction including laying the granite foundation was done by a local head load worker and his gang of masons and other laborers. Thus, there was no need for a civil engineer’s fee and I could practically look into every detail as well as the ensuing cost. We completed the house as soon as the plaster works were completed, and then continued over the years with slow painstaking additions and refinements. Why I state this is that over the years I was able to guide myself with inner instinct and not be greedy during my future ventures in the stock market where I was relatively successful. I never fell for greed and knew about the taste of hard earned money.

Varying occupation

     During my working life in Kerala I was never enthusiastic about the employment prospects and landed in the worst job situations only to skip out at the next season. This was primarily due to the reason that most businesses in Kerala then where an extension of the kitchen of some gulf repatriate to while away his time and sing to his whims and fancies. In fact, expanding the existing base of a firm or business was as deplorable to him as nothing else would. So when I was hard pressed for cash I tried to keep the books and accounts for several firms and looked after their sales tax matters. Then when my house was progressing for the better part which needed my utmost attention every single day I opted for marketing jobs, not as much for the job as to be near to the house-in-progress. This was indeed my most trying time both financially and mentally and I spent several stressed hours of the day trying to figure out whether I was doomed to fail or succeed in life.

     After my house became erected so that we could shift with little of our belongings I took on to steady jobs and would be grateful to have a roof over my head belonging to us. All the while both my wife and I were slightly active in equity market. Later on it transpired that I should go to the stock market daily. From that day onwards I became self employed and looked after a portfolio of some seven to eight companies. The fact is that although I went to the stock market daily I rarely did business, but kept a sharp eye of the share price movements. Only once did I put a stop loss and usually I sold only for profit. Meanwhile I read all the newspapers and magazines pertaining to the Indian and foreign markets and became more and more engrossed. I would sell a share with great care and doing so only after a careful study and that too with one or two shares in my portfolio and then sell them at a profit and when there was a slight correction I would purchase the same again. I actually stopped trading and buying when the market rose steadily to 17,000 marks and beyond. The news everywhere started to announce that the Indian market would reach 20000 points mark and when it did reach there the media started predicting 30000 and even 40000 levels. Sometime then I was enthusiastic and then it suddenly gave to fear for my instincts told me that there was nothing so wonderful in the equities to lend to so much weightage to the index. And besides, I saw the FIIs were pouring money into the Indian markets and the same was shooting up gave me a feeling of discomfort that all may not be all that good. I was quite sure too that they would sell off as soon as they had come. It was during this time that I formed my opinion that if the index has to pass the 30000 levels then the trade cycle will surely need to evolve into the next level which later on I wrote down in one of my blogs. To put in short I sold of all my portfolios a month or so before the final burst or crash and didn’t visit the stock market for a long time. In fact, I had started publishing articles for other websites in the Internet and within a short period of time I think I had written about 2000 articles online (relating to myriad types of topics)and some 300 papers for online academic institutions with my background of research knowledge in business management. I guess I was successful for I got frequent bonuses although fine too was there, but not too bad in my case. I had written both for undergraduates’ students in foreign countries, post graduates, masters and PhD.  It was then I started my own blogs and started writing my own articles and hypothesis in Economics.
           The mayhem I came to experience at the stock market especially those of small traders who lost their entire life savings gave me some ideas to think hard about the general problems faced by economies around the world and the need to understand as to whether a lot of liquidity is the problem or that there is no proper asset backed system in place. Although I came out unscathed from the crash, nevertheless I couldn't help feeling for those who lost heavily. I read about the problems in USA and Europe as well as other developing countries. You may as well as say that the 2008 crash turned me into the field of economics than anything else.
              Life in Kerala was not quite smooth as I had wished it to be. During the course of academic freelancer and due to continued intolerant on part of a group of people I was subjected to much harassment by them. All sorts of unbelievable and absurd canards were spread against me.  I eventually lost my academic freelance writing which was quite good as far as the remuneration was concerned. It happened quite suddenly and one day I was cut off from the rest of the world with the Internet gone. I later noticed that the broad band cable were lying cut and distorted on the tarred street near to my house. Although I called up the broad band network office I got the connection only after a whole week by which time my foreign based institution had closed their site for me. Naturally, how long can they put up with a person that remains unconnected with them for so long time. The work involves deadlines as they are also answerable to their clients. My family later on for months struggled to make both ends meet. There was no compensation then and also now. The ones who were spreading all these canards were actually neck deep in prostitution, flesh trade, drugs, pimping and other nefarious activities. And since I came to know of this I was subjected to threats and malicious canards.
    Apart from these I was subjected to harassment from few firms where I worked before I tried my hand in freelancing online. It seemed to me then that the people by and large are against those that came from other states. I lost heavily financially and psychologically. Most firms then operated on the basis of hoot-boot-scoot policies and many were on the verge of disappearing after investing their whole profits including what they got by cheating and hawala transactions in real estates. These experiences gave me the basis for my future theories on land. Over the years I became greatly engrossed in my research into economics and the life of human beings within India and around the world.
          But the fact is that I regard myself as a student whose learning journey should never end till one dies and in this I am fortunate to have developed my own self developing learning skills. 

       At the moment I and my family have settled down for good at Thrissur in Kerala with my son Ghanashyam who has come quite late in our life is studying at Don Bosco School.