Rasik-da

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Rasik-da

2002: IIT KGP:

To Commute or Not To Commute

No, this is not about the wisdom or otherwise of renting your apartment near your workplace in Hyderabad.

This is about a gentleman called Rasik.

During my University Days, one of the raging questions was the definition of gentleman in the Indian context. Everyone knows the definition of an English gentleman.

Our social structure being so different than the English, the definition ought to be our own.

I thought that the Hindu Indian gentleman is aptly described as a gentle man.

None of my classmates agreed it could be that simplistic.

But Rasik was a thoroughly gentle man. During my 40 years in the Physics Department at IIT KGP, I never saw him lose his cool. He never was found drunk.

Since he was almost permanently posted in the X-ray Research Labs, I met Rasik rarely, except when the Jumbo 10-day all-day ritual of JEE spot valuation was on in the second year lab on the second floor for a decade or so.

Rasik was our resident tea-provider. 

I used to join the mela not for making good money (which I never did), but just for enjoying the jamboree picnic spirit.

Rasik guessed my jolly mood and was doling out subsidized tea every hour without asking.

I knew he was a good singer of folk tunes, because he was humming whenever he was free. Indeed during his farewell, which happened a few years before mine, he was asked to sing and he did oblige.

A few days before his retirement, I happened to visit the Physics Office one quiet noon when he was alone with Didi who was egging him on to sign the Commutation Forms.

He was declining to do what everyone without exception was doing. 

Didi was patiently explaining to him that by foregoing R rupees of pension per month, he would be getting 120 R rupees as a lump sum which, if he fixes in any Bank, he would be getting the same R Rupees per month as Interest; and the Principal would be intact forever (those were the golden years of tight money policies of the Reserve Bank with a whopping Interest Rate of 12% on FD). 

Greed!

Rasik simply refused to listen to the details.

His logic was simple:

“Didi, if the Government (Shorkar) is offering a crazy (pagla) scheme like that, it is for their own good, not my good. No, thank you!”

He stuck to his guns and turned out to be the only one who didn't commute!

He said he needed his Full Pension which he would like to enjoy and be rid of dependence on his children whom he didn't trust an inch. 

And much less the GOI!

By the time I retired a couple of years later the Bank Interest Rates tumbled to a pitiable 6% and Didi’s logic went phut!

And I am sure the Commuted Amount which Didi said would be ‘intact forever’ would go to the Corporate Hospitals of Hyderabad which will put me in ICU and refuse to discharge me till my PF, Commutation Amount, Leave Salary, Gratuity, my son’s savings, my daughter-in-law’s savings, and my wife’s ornaments all go up in smoke. 

And then they would also offer my son hard Personal Loans with easy EMIs to keep my brain-dead body clinically alive.

When we were young staying in the IIT Hostels, whenever any of our colleagues used to go to the campus BC Roy Hospital for admission, the others would sing in chorus the popular Film Song:

O, Jaane wale, ho sakto lout ke aanaa!

Same with the Corporate Hospitals of Hyderabad. 

I don’t know what happened to Rasik-da.

I do hope he is enjoying his Full Pension! 

P.S. After waiting for all of 15 longing years, the other day I got back my commuted pension of Rs 7,000 (not the Rs 70,000 which that would be in today's money :)

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