How much is your life worth?

-
I remember reading a story where a certain king wanted to know what his life worth was. All the courtiers were dumbfounded not wanting to displease the king by quoting too high or too less since kings can get temperamental. The problem was solved when a wise man said that the king was worth not more than 29 pieces of silver since Jesus Christ was betrayed for only 30 silver pieces. The king was pleased with the answer and felt humbled and so ended the story.

If I were to pose the same question to you, what would be the answer? It could be 29 pieces of silver or just 2 rupees if you were a tribal hailing from Orissa.

I work in an industry where calculating the human life value, no matter how absurd the concept may sound is a daily practice. In this industry the value of one’s life is usually measured by the income generating capability of the individual. For a salaried individual the easiest measure is to express the value as a factor of X where X will be the annual income. Based on this premise the insurance industry peddles life covers to the people. And what is a life cover? A life cover cannot insure life; that is the department of the divine one; it can offset the monetary loss of income in the unfortunate event of the death of the person insured.

I often wonder, is that all we are worth?




Comments

Post a Comment

Your take on this?

Popular posts from this blog

Bad donkey, small wall.

-
Image
This was a crude translation of a proverb that comedian Karunas (as pointed out by Chriz ) made famous in one movie. The Tamil original runs thus, “Kazhutha ketta, kutti suvaru” so you have the translation. I heard that line somewhere and I wondered especially having heard the translation as to what could have been the origin of the proverb. Any ideas? PS: I Googled it and did find something.
Read more

Memories of PTC bus journeys!

-
Image
MTC bus today! As I was turning into Haddows road today a MTC bus whizzed by nearly missing a few people on the road as is the norm. Just when I was about to curse the bus and its driver and everybody connected to it, my mind drifted back to the days gone by when I used to travel by these buses. The more my mind drifted, more instances that have been deeply etched in the confines of my memory came out like a mental slideshow. It is amazing how at the most unexpected moments lost thoughts surface and make even poor memory people like me feel good about us. Coming back to the post I thought I will put together a few memorable ones for the record. It was in the days of khaki shorts and white shirts, the old uniform of Dominic Savio Preparatory school (I’m told it has graduated to a matriculation now!) and its bigger sibling St. Bede’s Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School (100 years now, dear school of our hearts). School was a two stop bus ride from home if you got onto a white board bus
Read more

Appa tie, Amma gown

-
Image
This post was spurred by some grammar related conversations in the CBC I   went through college with the tag “Peter” or the longer “Appa tie, amma gown” . If you have not got it yet, my English was flawless and for those who could not follow what I said they thought that this was payback. It was not a fluke, my parents did not have a convent education but they ensure that my brother & I got one. It was an Anglo Indian school where speaking any other language but English meant you ran rounds around the decent sized play ground. My neighbours were Anglo Indians too, a wonderful couple who also taught for a living in my school, did i forget to mention they had two daughters who were similar in age to my brother and me ensuring that we played & grew up together for a few years. As it was English near home and in school my fluency increased. But even this upbringing may not have been enough were it not for one unforgettable instance when I noticed that the washed
Read more