The Hindu Business Line : Wish you a healthy heart to take Sensex shocks

IF you had survived the midnight of December 31, January 1 posed a different problem, of having to play who-greets-first game. Because, otherwise, you would be reduced to saying the clichéd wish-you-the-same.

There are odd people, they say, who are so averse to hackneyed phrases that they go about greeting this way: "May I wish you a happy New Year, and may I also assume that you would like to wish me the same?" In response, you need to simply nod. However, there were a few wishes that were different.

"Hope you like this," is what a friend sends as greeting by mail. It begins: "If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who won't survive the week." A quick check of the world's death rate on the Net informs one that, on an average, 1.78 people die every second. That is, 6,390 per hour, 153,000 per day, and easily beyond a million per week.

There are more numbers, which could be tougher to countercheck: "If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 20 million people around the world. If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75 per cent of this world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8 per cent of the world's wealthy. If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read anything at all."

Even if these numbers are taken with a fair degree of error, plus or minus, the message that gets across to the haves is not so much a call to share with the have-nots but to stop feeling inadequate. There are more paragraphs that speak of how one is so blessed in ways one may never even know.

Another e-greet that comes from an accountant friend: "Aapko is naye saal me... Chandragupt ki shakti, Meerabai ki bhakti, Ramchandra ka gyan, Karan ka daan Einstein ki buddhi, Nobel Prize ki siddhi, Gandhi ki ahinsa, India ki parampara, Vajpayee ki maryada, Nizam ki sampatti, Michael Jordan ki salary, Abdul Kalam ki vocabulary, Bhagat Singh ka deshprem, Sweetheart ka amarprem, Microsoft ke share, rupiyo ke dher, Tata ke senses, Ambani ke licenses, Birla ka bungalow, Daler ka bhangra, Rajnikanth ki style, Madhuri ki smile, Amitabh ki personality, Ratan Tata ki popularity, world tour ka ticket, Tendulkar ka wicket, administrator ke passwords, jokes ke forwards, Mercedes ki car, diamond ka haar, aur logon ka dher saraa pyar prapt ho..."

Whoever created it may have to make a few changes in the light of recent developments. Thus, you might substitute Keanu Reeves for the Mauryan emperor, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the generous warrior of Mahabharat, Buffett's portfolio in the place of Nizam's assets, and forex pile rather than a rupee heat. Likewise, you could think of plugging in you favourite star's smile, and look for Dravid's wicket rather than of the little master whose bat has been deserting him of late.

How one wishes that somebody thinks of greeting us a little more realistically! Such as: Let your documents not be from Telgi press. May there be all GAAP in your accounting. Wish you a healthy heart that can take Sensex shocks. If a fall were to happen, let the recovery be steady. And may there be a good supply of salt to pinch with optimistic official statistics.

SayCheek@hotmail.com