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If sex-working is the oldest profession, money-lending would be its closest cousin. They have always had a devout sense of synergy. In the beginning both the professions were in the private sector but increasingly they are tending to be regulated, legalized and nationalized.
Money-lending was originally confined to individuals like the Shylocks and the Kabuliwallas and their ilk. But nowadays Governments have tended to become the biggest money-lenders doling out home loans, car loans, education loans, and what are called personal loans (as if the others are impersonal).
In the olden days even kings used to be in need of urgent money and had to borrow from rich merchants. Nowadays there are few kings but it is the governments that borrow from their own citizens and other governments. These go by fancy names like current account deficit and fiscal deficit and plain and simple inflation. The whole world seems to be in debt, everyone spending more than they earn in the fond hope of repaying one day and getting out of the debt trap.
Lenders in the organized sector like the finance companies and banks used to employ what were euphemistically called Collectors for recovering the monthly loans. There were complaints that these agents were using strong-arm tactics and our Supreme Court, it seems, prohibited these tactics. So, nowadays, the lenders are insisting on the loanee catching a Guarantor who is as culpable and as eligible as the borrower...sigh!
Loans are divided into two classes: good and bad. But the bad tends to drive away the good in the long run...witness the global crisis resulting from greed of money-lenders doling loans to the poor homeless and distributing the risk worldwide.
The ultimate borrower is Stanley Featherstonhaugh Ukridge created by PGW. He is so full of ideas for launching what are now known as start-ups, and failing, that he is always in dire need of that elusive thing called capital. When he has to scrape the bottom of the empty barrel, he would go to his rich and tightfisted uncle and ask:
"What about lending a tenner over the weekend?"
"No!"
"A fiver?"
"No!"
"No harm trying, no?'
"No!"
The toughest of loans to give and get are what are known as hand-loans given without any security but in good faith. As Ghalib Saheb has said, there always suckers who can't refuse a loan when they have the money with them. And the Ukridges of this world know their symptoms.
In our University we had to read a Conrad novel called Victory. It is located in the romantic far-east islands going by exotic names like Samburan and Sorabaya in the Malay Archipelago, populated by people with strange and resounding names like Zangiacomo. The novel begins with a saying that the affairs of trading companies follow an inverted sequence:
"First the capital evaporates and then the company liquidates"
There is a Captain Morrison in that novel who is like that sucker mentioned above. When he gives credit to anyone, all he does is to whip his pocket book out and note the transaction and then forget about it. No wonder his company folds up, leaving him in the possession of only his note book.
Such a lender and his borrower are, as Conrad put it, in the same relation as the spider and the fly.
I noticed such spiders and flies moving together so often that I had become an expert fly myself inadvertently...I can't refuse a hand-loan if I have the money...conscience. And I always ended up with a mere mental noting.
But this mental thing has been bad for me:
One day when I was sending my monthly Money Order to my mom at the IIT KGP post office, standing in the inevitable queue, Prof RM approached me grimly. I had just a nodding acquaintance with him. And he said:
"Could you please lend me Rs 20...the postal clerk says he has no change for hundred"
I did have a Rs 20 note (new then) to which I was rather attached. But I parted with it thinking that Prof RM would return it to me duly.
Days melted into months and months vaporized into years and years sublimated into decades...all of 2.
And we did happen to meet a dozen odd times a year and chatted silly nothings. But he apparently forgot all about that Rs 20 note and I was too embarrassed to remind him...he was senior to me professionally though not in age.
But whenever I met him I could think of nothing but that Rs 20...it became an obsession with me till I retired and left KGP and settled in Hyderabad and forgot all about it...till I got the news that his daughter was going to get married.
And then I remembered it again...this evening...
After a lot of agonizing, I developed a method:
When a chap comes in and asks me for a loan of Rs 100 (to be paid without fail next Monday), I tell him that I don't have Rs 100, but can give him Rs 10 if it is of any use. I have yet to find a chap who declines that vastly diminished offer. And I tell myself and my wife that I consider that Rs 10 as charity without expecting it to be returned next Monday or the Monday next year...I have yet to see a chap who stuck to his promise of returning it duly (or unduly).
Except one Moorthy once long ago:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2009/10/rain-drops-and-pearls.html
May his tribe increase!
...Posted by Ishani
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If sex-working is the oldest profession, money-lending would be its closest cousin. They have always had a devout sense of synergy. In the beginning both the professions were in the private sector but increasingly they are tending to be regulated, legalized and nationalized.
Money-lending was originally confined to individuals like the Shylocks and the Kabuliwallas and their ilk. But nowadays Governments have tended to become the biggest money-lenders doling out home loans, car loans, education loans, and what are called personal loans (as if the others are impersonal).
In the olden days even kings used to be in need of urgent money and had to borrow from rich merchants. Nowadays there are few kings but it is the governments that borrow from their own citizens and other governments. These go by fancy names like current account deficit and fiscal deficit and plain and simple inflation. The whole world seems to be in debt, everyone spending more than they earn in the fond hope of repaying one day and getting out of the debt trap.
Lenders in the organized sector like the finance companies and banks used to employ what were euphemistically called Collectors for recovering the monthly loans. There were complaints that these agents were using strong-arm tactics and our Supreme Court, it seems, prohibited these tactics. So, nowadays, the lenders are insisting on the loanee catching a Guarantor who is as culpable and as eligible as the borrower...sigh!
Loans are divided into two classes: good and bad. But the bad tends to drive away the good in the long run...witness the global crisis resulting from greed of money-lenders doling loans to the poor homeless and distributing the risk worldwide.
The ultimate borrower is Stanley Featherstonhaugh Ukridge created by PGW. He is so full of ideas for launching what are now known as start-ups, and failing, that he is always in dire need of that elusive thing called capital. When he has to scrape the bottom of the empty barrel, he would go to his rich and tightfisted uncle and ask:
"What about lending a tenner over the weekend?"
"No!"
"A fiver?"
"No!"
"No harm trying, no?'
"No!"
The toughest of loans to give and get are what are known as hand-loans given without any security but in good faith. As Ghalib Saheb has said, there always suckers who can't refuse a loan when they have the money with them. And the Ukridges of this world know their symptoms.
In our University we had to read a Conrad novel called Victory. It is located in the romantic far-east islands going by exotic names like Samburan and Sorabaya in the Malay Archipelago, populated by people with strange and resounding names like Zangiacomo. The novel begins with a saying that the affairs of trading companies follow an inverted sequence:
"First the capital evaporates and then the company liquidates"
There is a Captain Morrison in that novel who is like that sucker mentioned above. When he gives credit to anyone, all he does is to whip his pocket book out and note the transaction and then forget about it. No wonder his company folds up, leaving him in the possession of only his note book.
Such a lender and his borrower are, as Conrad put it, in the same relation as the spider and the fly.
I noticed such spiders and flies moving together so often that I had become an expert fly myself inadvertently...I can't refuse a hand-loan if I have the money...conscience. And I always ended up with a mere mental noting.
But this mental thing has been bad for me:
One day when I was sending my monthly Money Order to my mom at the IIT KGP post office, standing in the inevitable queue, Prof RM approached me grimly. I had just a nodding acquaintance with him. And he said:
"Could you please lend me Rs 20...the postal clerk says he has no change for hundred"
I did have a Rs 20 note (new then) to which I was rather attached. But I parted with it thinking that Prof RM would return it to me duly.
Days melted into months and months vaporized into years and years sublimated into decades...all of 2.
And we did happen to meet a dozen odd times a year and chatted silly nothings. But he apparently forgot all about that Rs 20 note and I was too embarrassed to remind him...he was senior to me professionally though not in age.
But whenever I met him I could think of nothing but that Rs 20...it became an obsession with me till I retired and left KGP and settled in Hyderabad and forgot all about it...till I got the news that his daughter was going to get married.
And then I remembered it again...this evening...
After a lot of agonizing, I developed a method:
When a chap comes in and asks me for a loan of Rs 100 (to be paid without fail next Monday), I tell him that I don't have Rs 100, but can give him Rs 10 if it is of any use. I have yet to find a chap who declines that vastly diminished offer. And I tell myself and my wife that I consider that Rs 10 as charity without expecting it to be returned next Monday or the Monday next year...I have yet to see a chap who stuck to his promise of returning it duly (or unduly).
Except one Moorthy once long ago:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2009/10/rain-drops-and-pearls.html
May his tribe increase!
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