Risk.

Welcome to the Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where Anu, Ashok, Conrad, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Padmum and I write on the same topic. Please do visit the linked blogs to get five different flavours of the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by Grannymar.

Communication being the difficult thing that it is, the topic chosen by Grannymar offers me a chance to be a bit different than I usually am. Had I rung up Grannymar to find out the topic, instead of reading it in Conrad’s blog, I would have ended up writing about “Risque” instead of “Risk”.

I am normally risk averse but, I have taken a risk now in trusting that Grannymar’s sense of humour will prevail over her despair or indignation. But the risk is there nevertheless, that I may face some music from her. Let us wait and see. She knows that I am not risque averse!

As is the case often in my life synchronicity came up again when I read Cheerful Monk’s blog post “Optimist Or Pessimist” earlier this week when this post was on the drawing board. CM, this is my response to your question. I hope that it amuses you.

I am Panglossian in my belief that I already have the best of everything possible in my life and do not wish to take risks to jeopardize that status quo. Despite that however, I also accept that I cannot live a normal life without taking some risks. I know that every time I step out of my home, I risk being hit by one of the millions of two wheeler riding maniacs , who is quite capable of mounting a footpath to do the job. Every time I step into my very cozy shower, I risk slipping and falling and having to be rescued and perhaps hospitalized.

I am also practical in the sense that when I predict something in the future, the expectation will be strongly influenced by my present experience or value or emotion or whatever. This understanding enables me to minimize risks in day to day living by being realistic about the results that will follow taking such risks.

I have already written about the big risks that I took in my eventful past in my post “Taking Risks” and my views on the subject are, I hope, by now well known to my readers. Apart from those risks, I also took the big risk that almost all of us take without considering all the consequences – getting married! That is one risk that all married people take, based on a presentism projected to the future and discover that we have to make a lot of adjustments to a completely different set of parameters, nowhere near to the euphoric pre-marriage stages. Now that I am a widower, will I take that risk again? I don’t know. I would like to experience the pre-marriage euphoria first, which in turn will entail taking risks with new relationships and my panglossism may well kick in and warn me to be wary!

Let us now take a different view of risk. Here is my house guest Jay, all the way from California, USA in our native dress of a dhoti and a half sleeved kurta. Very comfortable to wear in our climate.


Now, don’t you think that Jay is taking a big risk wearing that combination? Unless you are quite used to wearing it there is always the possibility of the dhoti coming undone at unexpected times. So, the local lasses will hope that Jay takes a stroll in our park and hope for the best. Very risque is it not?

Now let me take another huge risk and be risque. Imagine Grannymar in a sari!