Long Live The King!

Now that eight months have already elapsed in one more calendar year, and one full academic year at Kellogg went in a fast-forward mode, may be it is time to pause, reflect, and make another five-year plan for life. Hmmm....but then....may be it is not. Why the worry and what's the hurry? It seems I have all the time in the world. No, I mean literally.....

A few weeks ago, an astrologer foretold that I will live for 92 years! Yes, ninety two, the six did not get inverted. The first time I heard it, I almost had my heart in my mouth and was scared to death! I thought, what the heck am I going to do for that long (a quick thought was to go get a law degree in my 40s and a medical degree in 50s, to balance an engineering PhD in my 20s and MBA in 30s).

I had to endure that mental agony for one full week, until the same astrologer came back and predicted that Neelima will live for 93 years! Hurray.....that was a big respite!! Knowing that there will be someone to bear my eccentrities to the last is a great relief (there will always be someone to listen to my babble, but if that some one is the same one throughout, it makes it less painful for both!). It is also a joy to know that she too will get to spend at least three years without me...she always wanted to have sometime of her own after I am gone (you can understand how painful it is to be married to me!). No wonder, Chris Shields, my good friend at Kellogg, could not resist saying, "WHO married you dude???", to my face in one of our recent case discussion meetings. And a few weeks later when I introduced Neelima and told Chris that "SHE married me", I could read the deep sympathy for her written all over his face!

By the way, we have not yet discussed the span of our lives with Vedant and Aadya. We do not want to scare them yet.....it will be too much pressure too early on Vedant for him to plan and include the eccentric parents in his retirement fund.......(Aadya will precisely be 60 years plus 1 day when Neelima departs, and so no worries there...but, yeah.....no escape for the brother....)

On second thought, may be we will tell them; Aadya seems to be borrowing the words of Robert (from Everybody Loves Raymond) and already conveying in her own sign language to the big brother, "If dad goes first, mom will be fine; if mom leaves dad behind, God save us all!" So, it will at least be a silver lining in the clouds for them to know that I have the shorter span of the two!

When I told my mom about the astrologer's "deadly" prediction, her first reaction was, "Thank God, you will certainly be there to perfom my last rites and read the eulogy"! I always had an inkling that she had her own concerns - someone told her a long time ago that she will live for 83 years - and I am glad that I put them to rest. Now, it is an impossible feat (putting the mother's concerns to rest without raising the wife's concerns) and I too failed at it....or rather God failed me in this test.

Whenever Latha, my sister and my best friend, tells me about the milestones she is achieving in her fitness levels (and of course, I can see that more and more she is looking like an elder sister of her own kids), I feel guilty of not making any efforts in that domain. Ha...now I don't have to worry yet; I have a very long time ahead to plan and work on it. For now, it is time again to start eating ice creams, my favorite food that I gave up a few years ago, all thanks to that astrologer.