Misinvestments

I live in a vest in my home. Generally, that is. When guests arrive, I upgrade to a Tee/shirt, for their sake. Vestment has a papal connotation, but investment? That has an entirely different connotation. In the efforts in investments, I could have lost my vest, what to talk of my shirt, off my back!

 Coming from a background which had nothing to do with making money, I was very ignorant about investments in financial "market". I was given a talking to about it, introduced to the share market (which I thought was illegal like satta market) and forced to buy Reliance shares when they went public, by a benevolent friend. When I refused to have anything to do with it, that kindly Officer, junior to me, said that if I didn't put the money, he would do it on my behalf. All I had to do was sign the forms. He was so gung-ho, I thought, what the hell. As per his advice, I signed some forms and my wife, worse than me in money matters, some others. Being a gentleman, I gave him the required amount. As it would have, I got allotted zilch, and my wife got what she filled up for.

 To cut the story short, later Reliance underwent many expansions and conversions. Then I was advised by other experts to convert my (somewhere along I had transferred my wife's shares to me with a lot of difficulties, I must say, for she refused to sign anything!) holdings into some others of the varied Reliance, which I did. I found that I was getting dividends of an incredible seven Rupees, annually, that too after a few blank years. I was ashamed to deposit that paper in the bank. The effort to fill up the required deposit slip itself was more than that amount.          Finally, another good friend, again an Army Officer, who dabbled in share market, both of us retired, on hearing my laments told me to give the papers to him, which I gladly did to tremendous relief. He did some back of the envelope calculations and said it was worth a decent amount. I was shocked. What? But if and only when it gets sold, he added. I said, "all yours, whenever. If at all". Finally, after a decade he gave me a cheque of an amount which was ten times what I had paid some four decades ago and which I had mentally written off! To me, that was a success story of investment. I was suddenly rich! Always good to start a story with something non-depressing.

 Once someone representing some investment firm approached me and gave a talk. High time I did something to secure my future, I thought. After all, by then we were a family of two plus two. When I gave him the cheque, he gave me post-dated cheques for one year. After a couple of months, everything was quiet. On enquiry, I learnt that the firm had folded up and the promoter was counting bars in some cell. That put an end to certain fancy ideas of mine.

 Land prices only increase over time it is said. Some half a century ago, my benevolent father bought some “land parcels” for all we siblings in a place which was to become a huge industrial estate. That suburb did become a big industrial hub. However, the location where we have our plots is still full of thorny bushes as it was when purchased, with nary a development! No transaction takes place, in that place! We dutifully go and pay our taxes once in a decade. The last time, we were told by a knowledgeable one in the village office that the situation will remain so for another twenty or thirty years! His pessimism was the least encouraging.

 Not to be left behind my colleagues who boasted of owning lands here and there, I too ventured into one which was promoted by someone who had some standing and had earned a name earlier. He had procured some vast land (in another state, not my home state) and divided it into various phases. I was allotted in what he earmarked as phase two. After a few years of paying what was demanded as development and maintenance (maintenance for some barren land?) charges which kept my morale up and chest puffed up at my wife as a 'landlord', came the inevitable bombshell. Just only phase two turned out to be Bhoodan land, note the point, just phase two. The high flying promoter even landed in jail for a while! I am being told the case is going on. It is now forty years again since I made the so-called initial investment. I think I can kiss this one goodbye for sure.

 It is March now. Bang on the first of this month, I received an email from the SBI, who typically remain steadfastly incommunicado. The email said that I should declare my investments, in four days time to enable them to work out my TDS. What investment, I thought and reflected.

 This is the month of financial guillotines - a time when all financial wizards run helter-skelter.  I couldn't help but remember the soothsayer telling Caesar to beware the Ides of March. When the Ides came, Caesar still being alive, ridiculed him saying, the Ides have come. "Aye, Caesar, but not gone" replied the soothsayer.  

 Since I haven't lost my vest off my back, perhaps I am more fortunate than Caesar.