A bird in hand, and the bush

Lets say you can shrug it off when someone says they enjoy being at work. Lets say you are kind enough to not look alarmed when the someone doesnt complain of having to wake on mondays. Lets even say you are just positively surprised to see that same one intensely scouring through an editorial on Bird Flu in China, as bland as 'the Hindu' can make it. (in the hope that it will give a clue as to the name of a company that manufactures its cure) Or when he asks you how your company is doing, and then clarifies that he meant its business, its profitability and its cash flows rather than yours.

But when he treats a new recruit at Infosys or a new article student going for his first audit, as his informant about the companies they represent, you notice things are getting out of hand. When you notice he sees everything in the world throught he lens of the stock market and exchange rates and what not!

The world in which anything is possible, where everything has its causes and effects, and the effects have their sub effects, and where something like lets say, buying an aeroplane, is a big deal, not the least because its expensive (talk about having people in your office who can actually buy one!) but because theres so much other considerations like the price of fuel for the rest of its life, the planned protests by the many NGO's about carbon emmisions as well as the possible advancements in other cheaper forms of transport that would make the plane worthless.

But even I never knew how much my picking stocks, and the logic I used had started affecting my way of thinking untill i recently came up with my list of arguments to counter my friends assertion that "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush"

Well just think about it. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush, provided all you need is a phrase to underline a moral story for your grandson. But then today, people seldom ask their granddads advice when it comes to buying something for the garden cage, or something for their wife to cook, which are the two reasons anybody would go after a bird.
Ok well, there could be a third reason. People hunt birds for the joy of hunting. Tell a hunter that a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, you'd rather have a PETA tee shirt on!

But back to the first two more plausible reasons. First, Lets say your looking for some birds for your domestic aviary, and have spotted some yellow birds with a blue beak and a red and green tail. You've got a net around, but you see there are plenty more birds roaming around nearby the bush. You could spread the net over the bush, catch one those beauties, scare off the rest, take the catch home, cage, and then preside over its solitude and eventual demise, ha. But if you waited for maybe a few hours, you could get a dream assortion of birds in your garden. If it was me, Id kill a few hours looking at the birds, grandfather be damned.

Or maybe you were hunting for birds because your children have been clamouring for something 'different' on the dining table. Now remember they are having wild geese after a long long time, and just a helping will not be enough. Either you can take home the one goose you've caught to your three children, their cousin, who has come home on holiday, and of course, your wife and your very own self and endure the muffled cries of "is that all?". Or you try your luck with the second bird, (If it wont be too late by then to cook dinner).

Now, of course, things may not be that bad at home. Still you would have just spotted a whole lot of birds on a certain tree for the first time in all the thirty years of hunting. Chance in a life time? after all, its just a question of one gun shot. But you might decide not to be cruel to the birds that have sought refuge in your woods.

What about your supply of bullets, or the new anti poaching laws, the presence of your vegetarian neighbour or even worse, the fact that it was ominous to kill a mockingbird?

And of course theres the question of your honour. For the last three weeks since you started taking pleasure trips to the woods with your hunting gear, your wife has been very understanding, but the last couple of days, you couldnt miss her enquiring look.

Over the last three months, I can count five different times when i coked myself on a trade that was doomed, just because I couldnt keep myself putting my hands where I shouldnt have. Or call it the difficulty of remaining the only sane person left in an insane world.