To Decide or Not...

There was an interesting discussion in TV on roughly the 'accumulation of wealth and its consequences' - not too sure about the exact topic as I joined late and some of the channels has the habit of flashing the programme details only once. Suggest this is done again at the end of the programme also with the details for feedback.

One of the TV participants referred to Narayanamurthy, when he was the lone vetoing person among his other partners when Infosys was offered a price of one million, when this money was huge. While the other partners' opinion would have meant reaping the benefit of multiple time of their investment, he seemed to be the only person who felt that Infy's stocks will climb astronomically and lauded his vision and more importantly the thirst for more.  Had the partners sold the company then, they would have lost billions, as per the current trend.

On the subject, I also recalled T T Rangarajan's writing in his 'Unposted Letters' that every human being has the moral responsibility to become rich.  He goes on to contend that ' the unwillingness of good human beings to amass wealth because of a sense of contentment has led a lot of money to evil forces'.  

I was stopped dead on track by this assertion as I have been taught by my father that if I borrow and make a living , then I have no chance to lead a decent life (கடன்  வாங்கினால்  உருப்பட  மாட்டே ).

What is perplexing is - the multiple times profit then against Billions of loss now - say after 10 or 15 years. Which is better? How do you decide - is there any logic behind this???

Again how can one be sure that delaying is always going to pay you dividends?  Another example from my own group of friends backs this. A group  of 4 friends bought a piece of land on the outskirts of Chennai for a paltry Rs 20,000 in late 1980s and when it was offered 3 lakhs after a decade one in the group  sold it and was happy that it had fetched him enormous profit. After few years when the ground prices soared another friend in the group sold it for 9 lakhs and the first one was crestfallen. The third friend sold it for 12 lakhs in 2009 and when the fourth was waiting for further boom, it was usurped by land grabbers after paying a pithy one lakh. Now, who is wiser? Is your intelligence, business acumen or current general knowledge has anything to do with this and could anyone have minimized the loss or maximized the gain? Or should one also take luck into account like our one dayers?? I leave it to the more learned to analyze!!

My confusion was compounded by another lecture I attended yesterday. The speaker was the TV famous Mangayarkarasi , who while describing the powers of the Lord said that the more you renounce yourselves and shed all your accumulations and attraction towards assets , the more you will be peaceful and God will come nearer to you!

This intelligent world consisting of learned people, philosophical minds,  Industrialists and entrepreneurs all have different approaches to life but like the sales person on the T Nagar shopping area everyone insist  that theirs is the Best way . Those who also ran the benefit funds some years back thundered "Do not think too much. Invest now and let your first expense be an Investment".

One is tempted to tinker around with Shakespeare's famous words to suggest "To decide or not to decide…" My relative used to say that his boss insists on his staff making a decision, and a wrong decision is better than indecision. 

For a common man, as the song goes , " ஒண்ணுமே  புரியல்லே    . .. . "