Senior Citizens: Have Conversations of the Khatak Variety!

“Hello! Is this Mr. ----?”

“Yes, speaking.”

“Sir, I’m calling from the Khatak Life Insurance Company…!”

“Oh, welcome back! So, you’re giving me a job again, right?”

“Well Sir…it’ll be a part-time job…!”

“How much salary would you be giving me per month?”

“Well…err…Sir! First you’ll have to come to our branch to discuss it over!”

“Nah, my dear lady! I won’t come again to any branch of yours. Since you know everything about me please send me the appointment letter!”

“Hmm…mmm…um…ugh…ooh…!”

“Enjoy your day!” (Cuts the line … Khatak!)

 

*

 

“Hello Sir! I’m -----, calling from Khatak Bank. Can I have a minute with you please?”

“About what?”

“We’re giving you a credit card with a lot of benefits, specially designed for you…!”

“So, nowadays you’ve started issuing credit cards to granddads too!”

“Pardon Sir?”

“What pardon? I know a bit about how you get our phone numbers. Now, once you get my number you have to be knowing a bit about my user profile too, no?”

“Your privacy and security are our most important concerns, Sir! ...”

“Whoa! Really? Then how come you don’t know I’ve crossed the age of 65 and am a pension-earning senior citizen?”

“Sorry Sir…um…ugh…ooh…!”

“Enjoy your day!” (Cuts the line…Khatak!)

 

*

 

“Hi Sir! I’m calling from No-Khatak Bank! We have a pre-approved and lifetime free credit card ready for you!”

“Arre yaar! Why do you keep on harassing me? I’m 70, don’t you know that?” (Cuts the line…Khatak!)

 

*

 

“Hello! Am I speaking to --- please?”

“Yes?”

“Sir, I’m calling from Khatak financial services! Is this the right time to talk with you?”

“Forget what’s right or wrong! Tell me what you’d like to talk to me about?”

“Sir, there’s a great offer for you! A pre-approved personal loan of up to a million bucks with discounted interest rates and easy EMIs…!”

“You know my age?”

“Pardon Sir?”

“Let me know how exactly I’m supposed to utilize your loan since I’m 75 and so I hardly have any plans or aspirations of purchasing or investing or anything of that sort!”

“Hmm…mmm…um…ugh…ooh…!”

“Enjoy your day, dear!” (Cuts the line…Khatak!)

 

*

 

“Hello! I’m calling from Khatak heavenly travels and luxury resorts club! Can I speak to you for a moment?”

“What do I have to with you heavenly company, I’m heavily down on earth only and am sticking to that!”

“Oh Sir! This offer is irresistible! For a nominal annual membership fee it’ll offer you travel packages round the year in five-star resorts for 25 years, along with…!”  

“Hey my heavenly brother, wait! Why didn’t you check my age in advance? With a pension how do you expect me to afford your heavenly benefits? I’ve just crossed 80, you know!”

“Hmm…mmm…um…ugh…ooh…!”

“Enjoy your day, darling!” (Cuts the line...Khatak!)

 

*

 

“Hello Sir! I’m ---, from Khatak developers-builders!”

“Yes, how can I help you?”

“Sir, we have a huge project coming up in ----- site. Are looking for investing in property? You can book a flat early to have the early-bird discounts!”

“Are you providing me the millions of bucks needed?”

“Pardon Sir?”

“At the age of 85 how on earth do you think I’d manage a huge home loan to buy your property?”

“Hmm…mmm…ugh…um…ooh…!”

“Enjoy your day, honey!” (Cuts the line...Khatak!)

 

(Note: The hordes of leeches have unfortunately multiplied manifold thanks largely to the long pandemic slump. They pester you on whatever phone you’re using on a daily basis, asking for your money; they litter you text inbox with countless messages containing promos/videos/ links, asking for your money; they infiltrate your WA space too, inviting you to spend your money on a daily basis; you visit your favorite internet sites and suddenly they start asking for your money too; and even the money-rich famous religious places start hankering after your donations with daily reminders. You cannot possibly blame many of them as they’re desperately trying to make a decent living, apart from the downright hackers/fakers/fraudsters/greedy-for-money entities. Most of the other firms/apps are doing a thriving business by providing their databases liberally to the so-called telemarketers. In our modern digital age you cannot prevent that. However, my point is that when the service providers sell their databases why they don’t emphasize on the age-factor of the users so that at least the senior citizens are not harassed every day!

But to make matters worse, the senior citizens, mostly who’ve recently retired, are on special radar of some of the predating vultures like the life insurance companies. Their target is to blood-suck you dry, squeeze the last penny out of the varying pension packages hard-earned by the victims and reduce them to beggars on the street. Now, pensioners heavily depend on their savings to eke out an independent living and the tension increasingly gets heightened if they happen to live for many years after retirement. Beware then, senior citizens! Do never fall prey to their offers; never click a suspicious link; never seriously consider their job offers as they only want to make you spend at every step, indefinitely; never hand over your personal details to any entity; never make personal posts on social media. Remember that poverty among the pensioners has been rising worryingly across the globe.)

Age Is Just A Number: High Fives To My Young Fellow Seniors!

As the saying goes ‘age is just a number’, and in some cases it is high and in other cases low. The number doesn’t necessarily have something significant to do with the mind associated inevitably with it. If we go further from year to days the numbers become even more like simple numbers. Like when we say 10 years it seems to be a very long time—a decade as you’d normally like to refer to; but if we break it in number of days it’s just 3650 days or less. However, high numbers do signify body ageing which is biological and cannot be avoided, and unfortunately, ageing is taken by others with ‘low numbers’ in a negative way. The moment people cross the number 60 they are called ‘old guys’, and when someone dies in the range between 75 and above the others say that ‘the old guy has lived enough’. Lifestyle immoderation and inherited or accidentally acquired diseases do make the process of ageing faster and painful in some. But in any case, the mind can still play a vital role.

 

The mind cannot age unless you acquire diseases like the Alzheimer’s or dementia which fortunately can be prevented by the sheer energy of your mind, spirit and brain activity. The forces of the mind and enthusiastic attitudes can help you even while having terminal diseases. God forbid, if you keep on giving in to the negative thoughts and actions these send open invitations to all kinds of diseases. They should never think that once they have retired from their regular job, they have become old. Therefore, it is the strong mind with an equally strong willpower that converts age into just numbers. We keep on sleeping every day and wake up the next day with the same kind of thoughts or resolves or plans. Just how could your mind change or age overnight? Yes, it’s only the days or years that gets added to your ‘number’. If you want, you can keep your mind always numberless or ever young, and that’s what matters to all senior citizens, so called because they have higher ‘numbers’.

 

I have been privileged to be a member of a local club of senior citizens where most of them have numbers the range 65 to 70 with some of them approaching 75 or even 80. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that for them age is exactly a number. They have young minds and an indomitable spirit. Most of them go for morning and evening walks, eventually joining each other at the club premises, unfailingly every single day. They chat cheerfully for about an hour in the evening, at times enjoying steaming cups of tea or coffee, and then go back to their families—some with sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren while others live with their spouses. They are digitally literate and always engage themselves in the social media and groups with gusto. They are very kind-hearted and organize charity too as needed. We cannot avoid the unfortunate fact that many of the people with higher numbers have to maintain large families with meagre pension and a nagging financial insecurity.  

 

Occasionally, they organize get-togethers on someone’s birthday or anniversary or state/national events or at times without any reason, just for the fun of it. And, I’ve seen the tremendous enthusiasm and hyperactivity in going about organizing such events, moving around on scooters or cars or bicycles or auto-rickshaws; this reminds me of the innocent fun we had as children when organizing similar events or unions, and also in various stages of our varying ‘numbers’. There is always absolute celebration at the events or parties where everyone is forced to present a song or something through the loud speaker. One of two of them are actually good professional singers. Yes, mind is necessarily young; you only need to keep it so. In effect, we are always children—the children of God! High fives to us! And cheers!

 

Naturally then, when we’re referred to as ‘old folks’ we righteously get angry as happened recently with me. A very good friend of many years took my consent one day for an assignment in a forthcoming international event and asked for my updated bio. As I never say no to either tea or work, I went ahead with the proceedings. Around 10 days elapsed with no information from him and I thought perhaps he could not get it approved from the highest authority. Then, suddenly a call came from his organization offering me a job that forms only a miniscule part of the assignment offered earlier. Sensing the inevitable I said an assertive no.

 

Late evening that day the old friend called me, and then I came to know of the ‘reasons’ for not approving my assignment. Maybe the assignment was pre-decided in favor of someone with low ‘numbers’ or the younger smarter generation, and the discussion about my candidature a mere formality. Two of my earlier friends/associates of the organization convinced their supreme boss that since I am in ‘old age’ and I live far off from that office it might not be advisable to give me the job. The reference of the ‘old age’ infuriated me while I dismissed the second reason as a decoy, totally irrelevant as regards the assignment, and showed my anger in public, but deciding to move on.

 

That ‘telephone syndrome’ in fact energized me. For some time in the past few weeks, I’ve been in a dilemma about continuing with my writing work as I thought perhaps I had no ‘reading’ readers. A few days back I took a painful decision to stop my writing. But those telephone calls, and of course, a few very kind comments in social media from experienced author-friends/associates, made me reverse my decision instantly. True to myself I have decided to go on working till the last days of life, not allowing the ever-present external factors to be deterrents. Yes, I’m sticking to my basic nature irrespective of the increasing numbers getting added to me. My mind is ever-young like my senior citizen friends and by the grace of God I still have a reliably mobile body. Cheers for that too!

Why Life Certificates For Pensioners At All?

I remember taking my father, most probably in 1989, to his pension issuing bank branch thinking that he must have had some banking business to do. Arriving at the branch we entered the chamber of the bank manager whom my father knew well. After the customary ‘hi, Hellos’ there followed a casual chat, and then we left. I was curious as I saw none of the usual withdrawals or deposits or anything of the banking sort done there. So, I asked my father what was the purpose of the visit to which my father, with an ironic smile, said that he had to ‘show his face’ to the bank proving that he was still alive and kicking. Yes, every retiring or superannuating person from central or state governments or any other government organizations in India (I’m not aware of procedures followed in other countries) have to ‘show his/her fact’ to the issuing bank in the month of November every year mandatorily so that his/her pension is not interrupted. This is called Life Certificate to guarantee the continuation of the pension. I did not like it from that time—why to force people, some of them being very old and with illnesses, to compulsorily visit the bank just to prove s/he is alive. Why at all?

 

Over the decades there have been various certificate forms to be signed by the pensioner physically present at the banks apart from showing the face to familiar bank managers to generate the life certificates. With the launch of Jeevan Pramaan in November 2014 (a site and also a mobile app for pensioners to generate life certificates digitally) and the launch of Digital India to improve internet connectivity in the rural areas the Life Certificate exercise became digital and Aadhaar card linked. The Jeevan Pramaan (evidence of being alive) site is friendly guiding the registered users to get to know about generating life certificates from their homes. However, it is not that easy as it sounds.

 

When it was my turn to superannuate, in the month of November itself in 2019, I had to know all about this procedure notwithstanding my inherent dislike. I asked several of my retired colleagues about how to do it. They all said that it could be done online now. Therefore, in November 2020, with COVID-19 restrictions very much in force, I tried to do it online. I registered in Jeevan Pramaan with the normal OTP business and became a user. But, I found that to generate the life certificate I must buy a biometric device from outside, register that with the authority and to attach it to my computer or smartphone in order to authenticate the application with fingerprint o iris scan. Finding it a cumbersome process I gave it up.

 

I had then finally to go to my pension-issuing bank branch and was horrified to find queues of eagerly waiting old and frail pensioners without any social distancing and the process was extremely slow. I had no other alternative but to join the queue hoping for the best, even though I knew one always-helpful lady executive there very well; because I did not want to jump the queue considering the fact that most of the people there were much older than me. As luck would have it, the lady noticed me waiting and fidgeting impatiently due to violations of norms by the very people whom the governments always asked to stay at home safely, and called me over to her counter. I produced my Aadhaar card, my pension book containing the Pension Pay Order no. and gave these to her. It was done under five minutes taking my fingerprint on the attached device. Relieved, but with sense of guilt seeing the older people still waiting, I walked away with a copy of the life certificate she gave me.

 

Now, to the question of why at all these certificates are needed. Well, it can be said that without this ‘proof’ the death of any pensioner may not be reported to the bank in which case the next of kin would go on drawing the full pension, perhaps indefinitely; but that is not possible for two reasons: first, most bank branches have a locality-based clientele and the word-by-mouth always reaches them; second, most of the families losing the primary pensioner would consider completing the process of the ‘family pension’ issue more important. However, this problem of possible fraudulent practice cannot be resolved by the life certificates. Because, the certificate is generated on a particular date of November when the holder is declared to be alive, now if, unfortunately, the pensioner dies the next day or days later the bank would face exactly the same problem of getting the information.

 

Majority of the Indian population cannot afford a smartphone or laptops or desktops, forget about the biometric devices, and despite Digital India the rural areas still suffer from the connectivity hassles as have been proved in the lockdowns with most of the rural students getting deprived of online classes. Besides, many among those who can afford the devices financially do not possess the technical knowhow. The net result of all this is that during the month of November every year the bank branches or the Jeevan Pramaan centers are always crowded with old people which is unpardonable not only in pandemic times, but also otherwise, forcing them to come out of homes—some tottering with sticks, some frail and weak and some with illnesses.

 

So why should the life certificates be compulsory or for that matter necessary at all? Why should it not be scrapped like the Modi Government has done with so many archaic laws or practices? The banking business has been extensively personalized in recent years with millions of phone calls made every day to customers on various schemes or benefits. So, why don’t they just make it routine to redirect some of these calls to their pension-drawing customers, maybe twice or thrice in a year as the most effective way of finding out if they are still alive or not? The inherent problems of generating life certificates have also helped the emergence of ‘agents’ who are ready to come to your home to do it on the spot for you, of course, for a handsome amount ejected out of you. This is one more of the undesirable results of the unnecessary practice of life certificates. I’m not suggesting that people should not acquire new and newer knowledge about easier digital ways; I’m only saying this particular practice does not serve any purpose.