Tag Archives: Recession

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My Friend’s Entreaties

Recession: When will you reverse to return my lost job?
Head hunters: Do not fold up as yet as I would have no more doors to knock.
Tele interviewers: do not be insincere and pretend that I am good and yet not offer me.,.
Friends: Do not whisper at my incompetence.
Parents: Do not grieve as a quarter of a centum are unemployed.
Trade : will ships and containers move?
Car Dealers: will you sell more for the confidence factor?
Purchase Managers: At least say you will buy more.
Fed: please ease quantities of hopes.
Cliff hangers: please do not fling us on…
to the abyss of uncertainty.

No herd to follow: i stand at cross roads.

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Should I believe?

This is a story several years old.

My dad who was a flourishing brick-maker was hit by what I now understand is a recession of those years… a sustaining lack of demand for bricks over an agonizing period of time. Bricks were stacked everywhere and despite severe price cuts there were few or virtually zero buyers. Construction had ceased. My dad tried his best to keep things going but with unsold stocks, it became near impossible to meet banker deadlines for repayments. On expected lines, the bankers retaliated in swift and forceful measure: in the beginning they curtailed and then withdrew bank credit limits.

Unable to make both ends meet, my dad borrowed heavily from friends and neighbors for large and small sums. Repayment deadlines were instantly transformed to default deadlines and obtaining fresh loans became near impossible. There was even voluntary rationing of all household demands. Meat and fish disappeared from the dinner table. I was experiencing the “frugal living and high (but bitter) thinking” phase not too quite stoically. As events unfolded rather painfully and day to day life became so difficult, I started losing faith. My parents would get up early morn and pray and to myself, by now an agnostic, I felt that prayer was a waste of time. I was unemployed and bitter at a world that did not seem to care ; the job search efforts were to me waves on boulders. I felt guilty that I was not fending for myself. As an aftermath of a rapid series of setbacks, I decided that faith was unwarranted.

One morning, from the blue, I got a call for an interview. The organization that called me for an interview was a thousand miles away. The cheapest mode of transport was by train. The train fare had to be paid … and my dad was neck deep in debt. I , on my own, tapped several probable doors, but we, as a family, seemed to have lost creditworthiness. The day before the interview, I saw my dad pray longer and I laughed to myself sarcastically; this was another futile attempt by a penurious man to ingratiate himself to an insensate Being, I reasoned.
I even confided my lack of belief to my mother.

Now, from my memory:
I have four hours to the train time and there is no sight of money. I resign myself to being unable to travel. My unusually reticent dad now asks me to pack to travel. I go inside and grumble to my mother “Why is he asking me to pack. we do not have the money even to buy a one way ticket”. My mother says fatalistically that God would help. “We are a happy family because we listen to each other”. “God will take care”, she says. I grumble that she has read Charles Dickens a bit too much!
Reluctantly I pack, so that I do not appear to be a disobedient son.
Three hours to the train. the cranky gate opens in un-lubricated pain. In walks a tall, middle aged stranger. He seeks to meet my dad “I have come to consult you on my proposed construction of my house next year”, he begins. My dad listens patiently. Standing by the door side, I frown. I am impatient as it is now two hours and half to the train.

“I have plans to construct a house next year and I have heard that you sell bricks. I want bricks for my house. They told me your factory is shut and you live here”. I am worried about the train in the next two hours and he is bothered about bricks now for next year!
My dad softly tells him: “Sure. Come in next year”. “Yes , yes, I shall,” he responds. ” But there is one condition, you will give me next year at today’s prices.” My dad smiles, unsure what to say. The stranger then says ” I shall pay half the value now as advance”. My dad gives him a price. The stranger, strangely, does not haggle. “Part I have cash and part in check.” My dad looks to where I am standing and nods unhesitatingly. As my writes the receipt, my mother says the stranger is God.
My dad asks the stranger if he could drop me off at the station. He wishes me luck as he leaves me off. As I wait for the train, I wonder if I should continue to be an agnostic. Will I get the job?

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A day’s thoughts

Listlessness on a Tuesday afternoon-
Worrying more about what could be,
Than about what is for the day done,
All my life is a worrisome, long,strife,
More of high pressured dread in blood,
About a probable recession, joblessness,
As still as life’s circle movement could,
Some steep climb, pause, breathlessness,
Towards a wearier mountain heated red,
Then that smile beaming eternity,
A return to the shadows of plains,
The meandering thought of nativity,
A return home to backwater rains,
To narrate to them ripples all my strains.

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An Invitation

These are days of recession. It is common for borrowers to be ‘underwater’. You borrow and your asset value covers a little short of your assets. So you are left floating in the deep, half dead sea of debt.

Some months earlier the small business I had had failed. Someone had helped me out temporarily with a small measly income job. With ‘downsizing’ all around, I was struggling to keep myself on the rolls. I found myself vulnerable as I felt there was a skill mismatch. To pay off loans, keep my kids at the University and to meet other commitments I had to slog, over borrow. My boss was a bit difficult and would sometimes upbraid me in the presence of others: “Are you breaking stones? Work a little smarter”, he suggested. The approach gave me a complex. Word slowly gained that I was not necessarily a success.

Now with the property valuation fall, I felt caught in an elephant trap. I stared at an impregnable wall. I knew I was a bankrupt. If your known assets cannot cover your liabilities, your net worth in the lender’s eyes is negative. In simple words,I became a tenant in my own house. A tenant served notice to vacate. Gradually, my acquaintances ceased to visit me at home, except very few like my friend, Austin.

I sold my car, put myself on the best of face and boarded public transport. People in the neighbourhood suddenly realized that I was turning or had already turned insolvent. May be it was a complex but I felt people were largely avoiding me. I felt they looked at me as much as an unwelcome cockroach in the kitchen cabinet.

In such a ‘Kafkaesque’ situation, I found that people ceased to invite me for social events in the community. I had suddenly fallen out of their grace. A social ‘pariah, I was compelled to adapt to an economic led social seclusion. Sometimes, reluctantly, my friend Austin would ask me if I had been invited to a certain function or a wedding or similar event and I would nonchalantly confide in him that I had no invitation. Other than Austin and my spouse, no one really seemed to notice at these social slights. Suddenly, there was perhaps an apprehension in the eyes of the people around me that I might borrow money from them. I consoled myself stating that this is what happens if you live beyond your means, even if the contributory factor was a global recession.

After weeks of resigned acceptance, I suddenly got an invitation to one of the local ‘big’ weddings. I was quite excited to receive it. Mr. Henry was among the higher echelons of the community and the an invitation extended for the wedding of his son might be a turn of tide, I said to myself. There would be social ‘reacceptance’, I reasoned to myself.

I was proud to inform my spouse of this invitation. I tried to persuade her but she was reluctant to join me. Both of us planned which suit I should wear. We decided that I needed to have the suit dry cleaned for the occasion. It might mean an extra coin, but it was worth the spending for social reacceptance that this wedding invitation meant.

Joyous, in the evening I went to visit Austin. I pretended it was a casual visit. “I have been invited for Mr. Henry’s son’s wedding”, I said. Hs eyes seemed to light up when he murmured “good”. “We shall go together”, I said. He readily agreed.

The wedding was as grand an affair as it should be. Suddenly I was happy to be back to the society… I felt secure in this crowd. Most of the time I tagged on with Austin as most people seemed reluctant to go beyond pleasantries with me. Nevertheless, I enjoyed just being there.

As we were leaving, I thought I should specially thank Mr. Henry for inviting me. I went up to him and did that. The look in his eyes, and the coldness of his handshake perplexed me. He seemed surprised, nay a little taken aback, that I had come for the occasion. Had there been a mistake?

It nagged me. In Austin’s car I was lost in thought. “Why are you silent?” Austin asked me. “Forget Henry. He is an egoistic guy”, he said concentrating on the road ahead.

I then guessed that Austin had reinserted the wedding card received in his own name on to a new envelope. He had forwarded it on to my address. That was a friend’s way of re-engineering a social reacceptance. Even though it meant a lot to me, for Mr. Henry I was an uninvited visitor.