Where have you been?

“Where have you been?” asked my friend Swami to Jigneshbhai, as we met for our weekend coffee after a really, really long time.

Indeed when I checked, it was over a year since we had last met, and some of our coffee house friends had also started asking me why we had stopped meeting.

“I was on some quests. I was climbing mountains and diving deep into the seas” said my broker friend to Swami.

Swami and I looked at each other wondering whether Jigneshbhai was serious about what he was saying or pulling a fast one, with some cryptic clues on his whereabouts over the past year. Be that as it may, with no further clarification forthcoming from our broker friend even after the usual confused looks on our faces, we just let things be without delving further.

But then Swami, as usual, could not control his curiosity and was the first to ask. “So what kind of mountains and quests? Have you left investing in the markets?”

Swami and I waited for an answer. It drew a blank, for a while at least. After a rather long silence, finally Jigneshbhai said, “A lot of famous people go away on these kind of retreats and come back refreshed. They climb mountains or go to foreign lands and come back with new perspectives, I hear. So I thought let me try that too.”

Swami was quickly ready with his next question. “So did you come up with some solutions to the falling markets? Or just had fun?” he asked rather bluntly.

Jigneshbhai had a wry smile on his face and replied, “When you come back from such retreats, you generally see problems, not solutions. Everything looks better in the places you have been too, and worse where you come back.” And he further asked, “and the problems you see around you when you are back can spark off a chain of frustrating thoughts, isn’t it?”

Swami and I listened to our broker friend, and couldn’t quite get what he was saying. Seeing our confused faces, he explained, “Don’t you come back from a foreign trip and then everything in India seems so bad for the first few days? And then that sparks a chain of complaints on our airports, roads and traffic for a few days, isn’t it?”

“Yes – so?” asked Swami indignantly, “So you are also finding problems after your retreat from wherever – mountains and deep seas – you went on a quest to?”

“Hmm” said Jigneshbhai. “Well, they are not real problems, mostly imaginations.”

“And when your mind imagines problems, it starts looking around for data or some aspects of reality to justify it, and that sparks a wildfire of thoughts. And then you think the problem is real.”

Swami and I were starting to understand a little bit of what Jigneshbhai was trying to say now, but not yet quite fully. As we were musing about it, he further continued.

“So if I am corporate employee back from such trips, I imagine problems with my job, my boss and commute. If I am an investor, I imagine problems with my shares, my mutual funds and markets. And if I am a politician, specially an opposition one, I imagine problems with the government. And yes, as these sparks ignite thoughts, some parts of reality do surface to justify them, and it can become quite a wildfire.”

Swami and I now understood what our broker friend was referring to. We smiled at each other happy that, for once, we had some clue of his tacit talk. Meanwhile, he continued.

“And then there are so many ‘amplifiers’ to spread the wildfire – maybe your thoughts or other people in your company, or other market participants and all the media especially, which is always looking for sparks with a potential.”

“But then, after a while, I always wonder – what started the wildfire? Did the imagination come first or did the aspect of reality come first? Or did the imagination and some aspect of reality combine on a fertile ground to start it?”

Swami and I found ourselves nodding in agreement with Jigneshbhai. So often in investing had we found that a rumor causes prices to drop and then some other news comes, and then there is further fact-driven amplification, and then it becomes a wildfire. But what came first? It is hard to say.

And then in politics too, so many allegations start and then some news comes, and then some data to fuel the imagination by the amplifiers, till it becomes a wildfire. But did the imagination come first or the data and amplification? Tough to say.

While Swami and I were thinking about this, Jigneshbhai confidently remarked, “But one thing is certain – whatever started it, there’s always someone taking advantage of these sparks, specially if they are in politics.”

This broke Swami’s and my chain of thought. While we were still thinking whether imagination or aspects of reality cause these sparks, our broker friend was almost suggesting that it doesn’t matter eventually.

Swami asked, “So you mean that someone engineers these fires?”

With a wry smile, Jigneshbhai, seemingly happy that we were asking the right question, said, “Well, it may or may not be true. But what is true almost always is that after it is sparked, someone, who is the same or different, is definitely taking advantage of it.”

Finally he confidently asserted, “For someone, these sparks or wildfires, fuelled by imagination or some aspects of reality, are always an opportunity – self-made or godsent.”

Just as he was saying this, I saw the wealthy man in the sprawling bungalow (who always speaks cryptically) at the table next to us.

He had been listening to this coffee talk between us. Before Swami and I could ask him where he had been, he looked at our broker friend Jigneshbhai, and, like Thakur from Sholay, in a solid baritone voice, said “लोहा गरम है मार दो हथौड़ा!”