My father likes to brag. Specially about his athletic abilities. Truth is, he does manage to catch the toast before it falls to the floor. At half his age, I can't do that. "Keeper's reflexes", he says. The rest of us exchange 'there he goes again' glances. Mom just smiles. +

Rana's mother insisted he call his father Pitaji. Not Papa, Baba, Babuji, and definitely not Daddy. 'But Ma,' he used to complain, 'this is the 21st century, not pracheen Bharat'. 'That's why I'm not asking you to call him Pitashri', she would retort. +

On the other hand, Sweety's mother, a very modern lady indeed, made sure she (Sweety) called her father Daddy. He didn't mind being called anything. Pop, Dad, Baba, Daddykins, Popsy.. as long as he got his quota of hugs and kisses from his darling daughter. +

Rana grew into a strapping young man. Earning raised (but respectful) eyebrows, when his friends heard him call his father Pitaji. But Pitaji deserved that honour. For he was an honourable man. +

He worked long night shifts at a distant factory 6 days of the week. At home, he was kind, loving, and indulgent during the few hours he was awake. His wife cherished his diligence, discipline, and devotion to her. She fed him well, and made sure he got his rest. +

Every morning at the factory, he'd hand over duty to Daddy, the Day Manager, and head home. Daddy worked all day till Pitaji returned to relieve him. On Wednesday, both of them took a much deserved break, when the factory had its weekly holiday. +

A watchman in our society, on an average, lasts 3 months. Just when we get a hang of each other's eccentricities, he disappears. So you have to start all over with the new man. 'Don't ever ring my bell twice... I carry my bags myself, thank you... '. And so on. +

Rakesh was different. He looked 16, though he was 21. Wide eyed, eager, sincere to a fault. He would magically get to the gate before you could honk, he'd never miss a courier, the water tank never got empty on his watch, the cars he washed sparkled. +

Before Rakesh, we had a run of disastrous men. He was like Kapil Dev walking in at 17 for 5. In a couple of days, we knew we had a keeper. Like those animated drops of lubricant in Castrol ads, Rakesh was everywhere at the same time, keeping our Society humming efficiently. +

Residents competed with each other to offer him a snack, a cup of tea, a t shirt from a sales conference, an old mobile phone. They all made small talk with him. Like writers on a talent show production, they discovered his back story. Jaunpur. Sick father. 2 sisters. Cows. +

He worked days in our society. And nights at another. He had no home in Mumbai. Yet he showed no signs of fatigue. Even Mrs.Menon had no complaint. That's saying something. Her last complaint was, '..the watchman makes loud noises brushing his teeth... unacceptable..' +

We are a people with pliable moral and ethical standards. Chalta hai, jugaad, we are like this only, kindly adjust, tedhi ungli, patli gully are cute verbal disguises for dishonesty. Taking liberties with the letter of the law has alway been okay. +

To us the law is not a diktat. It's a challenge. Like escaping from a mystery room. We rewrite and re-interpret the laws for ourselves in a more amenable, comfortable, acceptable, practical, convenient, benevolent manner.
+

And then we make abiding by this rewritten legal framework our way of life. In fact, we've made it a very cool thing as well. Giving and getting proxy at attendance, fudging a concession form, traveling by bus and claiming air fare, padding up travel expenses... +

... borrowing petrol and medical bills, copying in exams, getting rent bills from your own Dad, taking payment in a spouse's name, paying part in black, buying without a bill, using peons and office cars for personal work, bribing a traffic cop, ... +

... using the services of a tout at the RTO, greasing a TTE's palm, finding a railway contact to release EQ for non emergencies, buying booze and washing machines from the army canteen, getting fitness and sickness certificates without check ups... +

Bill Bernbach, the most quotable of all the advertising Gods, once said, "It's not a principle till it costs you money.' It is only as an entrepreneur (I wish there was a less ostentatious word for this), that I fully understood the genius of that simple sentence. +

Every now and again, you meet a moral dilemma. They are the most troubling kind. Unlike the 'sambar daalke ya alag?' variety of dilemma. I'm talking about business opportunities that come with the faint, or not so faint, whiff of blackness in the lentils. +

We live in a grayscale world. Viewed through multi-hued glasses. A world where doctored and engineered have unflattering meanings. Forget about squeaky clean, nobody even seems to be scratchy clean. Even hallowed seems like a typo for hollowed. +

Shouldn't we take briefs at face value? After all, we are communicators, not investigators. Shouldn't we take shelter behind caveat emptor? Pass on the legal responsibility to the client and the rest to the customer? +

We are sloganeers and image makers, aren't we? Paid for our cleverness. Not for our, what's that word, scruples? That word is always a bit elusive. +

This isn't a story set in the year everyone loves to hate. In fact, that was a pretty good year for Rahul. It suited him well. He was anyway an expert at staying indoors and shunning human company. +

He liked nothing more than to make two packets of Maggi using three sachets of tastemaker, a cup of tea brewed for precisely 150 seconds, and then settle down on his chair that was specifically chosen because it could rest the plate and cup on its broad arms. And a book too. +

He'd sit there and think thoughts like 'Even my name is so lame. It's the default option every copywriter uses while writing an ad about a young executive. Don't they know most Rahuls are in their fifties now?' +

Anyway, what I am about to narrate happened a year before the big bad one. On the day that the world has arbitrarily decided to burden with great import. New Year's Eve. A day that really meant nothing to Rahul. But late that evening basic arithmetic caught up with him. +

He had run out of tastemaker. There were six packets of noodles on his shelf, their throats slit, robbed of their magical sachets with the mysterious powers. Sealed with rubber bands, the packets stared back blandly at Rahul. +

FEAR - It’s the re-experience of failure in advance.

Many traders face the issue of Not entering in trades because of fear.

A thread on How to pull the trigger when the opportunity knocks.

Lets First start from knowing the cause of this "FEAR" of pulling the trigger.

A traders goes through many phases before becoming Profitable.

The first phase is the " APUN HI BHAGWAN HAI" phase-

When we first begin Trading, we don’t know any concepts, we don’t know about the risks , the dangers.

So we start trading, and like most guys by beginners luck we start making good, we start to calculate how much money we will make in next 1yr, 5 yrs, Greed start to Hop in.

We get introduced to Various instruments, F&O, LEVERAGE.

We take big positions as we don’t have any FEAR cause we haven't seen those bad phases yet.

Now we get the Big blow, account down -50%, or in many cases wiped out.

The first phase ends here.

Now we know How the market can kick our ass, we now know the risk that comes with those big positions.

"THE LEARNING PHASE"-

Now we know that we were just lucky initially and now we have to learn why we get those losses, so we start learning concepts , fundamental, Technicals.

Thread: A personal episode from the past that I feel is very relevant to be shared today, especially for parents of young girls.

I was 18, when my first cousin morphed my face with that of a male school friend in extremely compromising position.

Very believable for anyone without knowledge of tech.

I was devastated. This was a brother I looked upto. This was the brother I had given my laptop to so he could apply for jobs. And on the same laptop, he made those photographs of me, his younger sister.

Why did he do that? He was kicked out of his house by his family after he married a girl w/o their consent. He was homeless, so my parents let him stay with us till my his family cools down & accepts them back. After 6 months, he felt threatened he'd be asked to leave our place.

So one day, he confronts my parents, infront of me, with those pictures and shows those photographs, with clear terms - pay him & his wife a fixed amount every month, let them stay at our home or he would leak those pictures everywhere.

I still remember he explained how he would distribute those pictures on the day they would get me married 😂

I don't know how any other parent from lower middle class would have reacted to this. But I remember how my parents did, that changed my relationship with them forever.

My highlighted passages from The Psychology of Money by @morganhousel. Thread below

1. The 401k - the backbone savings vehicle of American retirement - did not exist until 1978. The Roth Ira was not born until 1998. If it were a person it would be barely old enough to drink

2. NYU professor Scott Galloway has a related idea that is so important to remember when judging success - both your own and others': "Nothing is as good or as bad as it seems."

3. Margin of safety - you can call it room for error or redundancy

4. "Every job looks easy when you're not the one doing it because the challenges faced by someone in the arena are often invisible to those in the crowd."

5. "The average equity fund investor underperformed the funds they invested in by half a percent per year, according to Morningstar - the result of buying and selling when they should have just bought and held."

Welp, I have no sound on the phone line for this news conference, so I shall tune in via video. Kenney is speaking and there is a photo of the boreal region.

Lost video too! Before that cut out, Kenney said they are expanding the Kitaskino Nuwenëné Wildland Provincial Park.

Back on the phone line. Environment and Parks Minister Jason Nixon. Athabasca Oil surrendered 23,500 acres in that region. Cenovus surrendered more than 60,000 acres.

Chief Peter Powder, Mikisew Cree First Nation, says we need to protect the watershed, the caribou habitat. Expansion of the Kitaskino Nuwenëné Wildland Provincial Park in the Athabasca Delta will protect most vulnerable species, he says

Powder thanks the federal government for financial support for the parks and thanks the province for supporting the vision.

thread of NPCs / side characters

blanket permission to use these as prompts for art or fiction, to snaffle them for #ttrpg campaigns, etc, go right ahead! i might use them myself too, in future works!

ship captain who's bound to their ship and can't step a foot off it onto land or another boat - they can swim a little in the surrounding waters, but that's it

mermaid who makes a magical trade for legs on the exact same day their human lover makes a magical trade for gills

faerie divorce lawyer who gets called onto assist with a human friend's legal troubles

the opposition vastly underestimates the lawyer's ability to run rings around contractual obligation

group of brownies who recently have taken up residence in the warmest place in a human's house - the cabinet their games console is in