Post Mortal

PuLa in his memorable essay entitled "तुम्हाला कोण व्हायचे आहे, मुंबईकर, पुणेकर का नागपूरकर?" or "Who you want to be? Mumbaikar, Punekar or Nagpurkar?" said that the life's aim of every Punekar is to "be recognised" after he retires. But, today's generation of Punekar does not have such small ambitions. We don't think that gaining fame in the life after retirement should be The Aim of one's life.

I mean, supposing a person retires at the age of 55 (if retirement age is not there, it will be when it's our time), and assuming a normal life expectancy of 90 years, we are looking at 35 years of fame. 36, if you are really good. That's not even a lifetime. So, we should be looking beyond just these 35 years. We should be looking at our "life" after death. That's when the fame counts. Like they say, very few great persons are "recognised" in their lifetime.

Keeping that in mind, today I found a great barrier in the efforts of my future biographers. Every great person seems to have written a lot of letters in his life, and books containing his letters to his parents, wife(/wives), children, friends, enemies (the list goes on) and the commentary on those letters are always bestsellers (among the historians and suchlike). But, my innate laziness and the advent of internet has resulted in the letters written by me being very limited in number. And the ones I have written, when edited will not even fill one good-sized book.

When I realised that, I felt like I am not doing enough for my future biographers when they will start writing their thesis on The Great ... me (I have yet to decide what Great ... I will be), and given my nature, it is very difficult that the condition will change in foreseeable future. This would greatly inconvenience them, and probably make them turn away to a better "lettered" subject.

But then I hit on the solution. The envelope left with my attorney (to be opened after my death), along with the post to be put on my blogs, will also contain the passwords to all my e-mail accounts. I will also leave instructions to clean the accounts of spam mails at regular intervals, to further convenience others after me. I also realised that this will also give me great advantage when compared to other, similarly lazy, internet-crazy people of my generation.




S.P. (i.e. small print): This idea, as all my other ideas is copyrighted. All disputes should be contested in the court of God.