Last Quarter

An edited version of the following short article appears on pages 196/7 of my 2023 book "Open Book of Happy Memories" Sharing on the Senior Citizen Day, 2025 : M G Warrier Last quarter M G Warrier Call it last quarter or last peg or last leg or whatever. Dr N Gopalakrishnan used to repeatedly say in most of his discourses that "None of us were here this day of last Century, none of us will be there on this day of next Century..." After telling us a lot Gopalakrishnan left this world somewhat early. Nothing works according to our plans in life. But that awareness should not stop us from planning. Even when not a single train was running on time, we had Railway Timetables. Before marriage, I had planned retirement at 50, hoping to live upto 70 years. I retired at 59 and now I am 79. Luck has been with me like an angel. I'm aware you can't trust luck, nor can we inherit or transfer luck. Yes, we were talking about life. One thing I have learnt in life is the relevance and importance of time management. Those who have not read Check List by Gawande, please procure a copy and read it once. No, it's not about time management. It's about managing your activities. If the surgeon had followed check list, s/he would have taken back the scissors before stitching the wounds after surgery. Oh, you may not be aware of the court case in Kerala about a surgical scissors which remained inside the stomach of a patient post-surgery! To help you decide whether to pick up a copy of Check List or not, here's an excerpt from a Newyork Times review published more than a decade ago : "Gawande, a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and a staff writer at The New Yorker, makes the case that checklists can help us manage the extreme complexity of the modern world. In medicine he writes, the problem is "making sure we apply the knowledge we have, consistently and correctly.” Failure, he argues, results not so much from ignorance (not knowing enough about what works) as from ineptitude (not properly applying what we know works)..." Back to planning and time management. We should have clear idea as to what we want to do today, tomorrow and thereafter. Then we will not have idle time beyond the level we factor in while planning our activities. In my own case, untill the pandemic brought the life around to a standstill in 2019, I never thought there can be a day without tomorrow. Covid was an eye opener for many of us. When we became prisoners in our own house, cut off from outside world except for supply of daily needs and communication over phone or newsfeed via smartphone and television, the all time realisation dawned that the possibility of a permanent cut off from the outside world cannot be ruled out. As many activities came to a grinding halt, time started overflowing with no work to do. I can speak only for myself. As faculties were in tact and our family was not in the priority list of Covid for whatever reason, I was able to reschedule my activities. Within days, I found myself as busy as I was pre-Covid. Instead of reading newspapers I was reading books from my old accumulation. Instead of chatting with friends in the garden, I spent more time using my phone. Instead of researching and writing long articles, I was mailing short responses or posting longer comments in the social media. But, frankly, it was a sudden realisation that I have reached my last quarter, which reality would have remained unnoticed for some more time. **** ****. ****