Aging is compulsory, maturing is optional. Well as you age, your friends age too – the guys with whom you can let your hair down and paint the town red that is.

We have all suffered from sexism (for a guy you know a lot about cooking and food, Subra), ageism (for a guy your age, you run well), …so I am not complaining.

Just want to tell you that God makes the same kind of people over and over again. Vijay Merchant, Don Bradman, Sachin Tendulkar – were not born in the same era, but played an important role.

It is quite customary to hear ‘these days kids have no sense of responsibility’. Man it sucks. All people born in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s – why even in the early eighties (oops) make this comment!

We had an xbrl training to be done in Cochin on Monday for the ICSI institute. Our business analyst (a kid born in the late ’80s) was supposed to go there. She realised on Sunday night that she was not well – and could have called in sick. She also knew that I had no other trainer – Diwali holidays and business travel had thrown trainer availability out of gear.

So this kid bravely goes to Cochin and delivers the lecture. The Organisers call me and say ‘She did a great job despite the vomiting’ – so it was there to see.

I call her and she is in tears saying ‘I did not do a good job’.

Then she messages me saying ‘I could have done a better job’.

Thank you kid. No you are not unique. We do have a few like you in our office, do we not? And they are all born in 1984, 86, 88, 91…..what more can I say?

I guess when we get older and some of us mature we associate with those who are like us. So ‘all’ our friends in the alumni meet do similar things, and say similar things. We have discarded or completely cut off from our classmates who are drunkards, wife-beaters, and jerks. We then by the sheer mental accounting process of ‘survivor bias’ say ‘Oh all our classmates are good, successful, good looking, on an average have 1.7 kids, drive a car, have paid off the mortgage….blah blah blah…

This is not a post against the older people I know, just a reminder that mental accounting and survivor bias can happen in real life and in investing.

There is no denying that the generation born in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s have FAILED the nation. Completely. But it does not stop them from writing such articles – Meena Kandaswamy’s article in Outlook magazine is sadly, not worthy of contempt, but yes people should read it. If you keep wondering why CPM, CPI, INTUC, AITUC are still alive, this article will clear it for you. Oh the virtues of selflessness – so good if everybody had it! And why all doctors (except me) should work in the villages, …blah blah…read on.

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?278704

you should also read Rito Paul’s (in DNA of 25th Oct, 2011) rejoinder to Meena Kandaswamy’s article, even though it is not a well written article, it is worth reading.