The Stock Market today

It's been a routine for us. As soon as we get up in the morning, I switch on both the television and the computer. I go to CNBC and check how the stock market is faring. By then, the computer screen comes alive, and I open the finance page. I click on the signs for specific stock quotes, one after another, to see whether they were green or red.

While we both (me and my equal half) start the day, with yoga and exercise, our eyes and ears are glued to the signs and words on the television. Why have we become so dependant on the television? Is it doing us any good, giving us ideas, advice on investment? Sometimes I am doubtful. Things happen so fast. It is not merely on someone's advice, but acting or not acting on it, that determines one's profit from the stock market, I think.

But it is all a waiting and observing game. Not totally a casino play, some amount of thought and intelligence is also required. But a lot depends on intuition, and personal opinion. So we both have disagreements naturally, due to our different dispositions. He is cautious, and I am a risk taker. I have less fear and the converse is true in his case.

Accordingly, our buying and selling decisions are characterised by our personalities. Often, when he wants to sell, I want to hold. When he wants to hold, I want to buy. A lot of disagreements arise. But finally we agree on one point, that  need to be cautious. I have learnt from him over the years, that I need to be careful in investing hard earned money on something as whimsical as the stock market.

About The Pearl

Yesterday night, after a dinner of wine and what my husband calls 'retrofitted' pasta, I picked up the slim volume of John Steinbeck's novel, The Pearl. On the firt few pages, the family of Kino, his wife Juana, and their son Coyotito are waking up in the morning and getting up from bed. It is a perfect day, a day similar to any other day when Kino eats the corn cake breakfast his wife makes in their traditional fireplace.

The entire scenario is so pristine, untouched, that it is a little out of the way when I get to know that they live in a brush house, away from the concrete and plaster houses on the other side of the land, and light a brush fire to cook their meal. There is a world of difference between these two segments of society. They are poor.

A sudden development brings their poverty into full focus. A scorpion bites the beloved child on his hammock. The mother Juana wants the doctor to come and look at the child, but she is informed by the neighbours that the doctor would not come to cure the child living in these houses.

Hence the march of the entire crowd to the doctor, who lives in a palatial house. The mony minded doctor refuses to examine the wounded child. He is also unable to find any value in the rough pearls that Kino offers instead of money.

What happens next, I'm eager to know. Would have to be patient.

Grapes of Wrath

Amazing novel by John Steinbeck, a classic no doubt. The use of local language, and style of presentation has a dramatic effect. There are commentary chapters about farmers leaving their land in search of work and money, interspersed with the story of the Joad family.

Each of the chapters described well how one by one the characters leave their moving family. Finally Tom, the son who killed a second man, leaves, and there is little or ho hope. But now and then, hope trickles in. The children's mother is extraordinarily strong. The surviving men help her by keepin together the remaining family.

Through all the suffering, help comes in in some way or the other. There was no work, but somehow the people earned a few cents and dollars, and the members dragged along.

The end is optimistic. The poor helps the poor. Rose of Sharon loses her baby, who is born dead. But she gives life to a dying man by giving him her milk. A striking, innovative, real end.

All throughout, the feeling is of a real family suffering.