The Golden Handshake

There are varieties of handshakes. The first time introduction results in a typical sliding handshake. Between business promoters it will be a firm handshake. Business acquaintances do a crab hold handshake. Among friends it takes the form of a bonhomie handshake-little patting and holding hands longer. The passionate handshake takes the cake - a python’s grip almost crushing the bones. This special is reserved between friends, who are fast and furious, in a literal sense, to take friendship to unimaginable levels of understanding. Better not to wear a ring on the finger at these handshakes!

There exists a separate kind of greeting - the golden handshake reserved for a resourceful or a retiring colleague or an ousted employee. The former handshake is an emotional flattery – an award, citation, a medallion or for the latter part it will be encomiums with retirement benefits, a sort of hand washing affair. For the ousted employee the handshake is an indication of his emotional disaster. 

In the former category of Golden handshake (for serious efforts while doing nothing useful and along with the less meritorious than me) the department chose to present me with two gold coins. I felt elated and inflated on noting that they were procured from a Swiss bank. After many nights of golden dreams, I managed to send it to the safe custody of our family locker. I started praying secretly, that my wife or daughter should not dream of converting the coins in to an ornament.

One are two such occasions arose like a monster’s head but I battled it out by offering a cash for new ornament scheme which my wife and daughter declined respectfully saying, “we will see at some other time”. Their plan was to lay hands on the coins and my counter offer failed to enthuse them. One more, close encounter with the locker occurred and luckily the bank remained close for two days on account of strike. The coins remained in the locker and I parted with some money to buy a trinket for a birth day gift.

Like a volcano lying dormant for many years, the coins remained in the cold confines of the locker. Being insignificant (in terms of needed cost of jewelries), my coins survived a decade of solitary confinement. Taking pity on them I decided to free them and present them to two of the family members of my choice.

The lure of gold slowly took a foot hold in my mind. Till then I was satisfied with a lone ring on the ring finger of my left hand. Not to propitiate any deity or as a shield from evil glances. I am a passionate person and have friends of the same category and ready to exchange a python grip handshake with me. This is the reason for the ring on the left hand. Indirectly this acted as a deterrent to my desire to adore my ring finger on the right hand with a ring!

Hard won trophies are cherished possessions and my dream was to hold the gold coins also in such esteem. Though I wished to give a coin each to two of my deserving family members, I had confidence to pass on the coins as well as the dream behind it to the winners. Once I was seriously thinking about drawing up a will expressing this fond wish of mine.

A few years rolled by a son in law and daughter in law increased the tally of contenders to six. I thought I could retain one of the coins as a trophy. Getting serious I drew up various plans to spot the two winners but all remained in a fluid stage due to my Shakespearian dilemma – to give or not to give. 

Another reason for the lack of progress might have been the reduced threat perception I anticipated for my dear coins – both the children are married now! The safety of the coins must have sent the neurons in my scheming mind in to a deep slumber.

Feeling ashamed at myself in not able to make up my mind straight away and complete the gifting ceremony, even after many years and innumerable excuses - I decided to act. This was the wakeup call my mind was waiting for. It started racing ahead preparing scenarios and assessment plans for the imminent contest. At this point it took over the planning and action with a vengeance.

First, it wanted me to bow out of the contest before the preliminaries itself –an awarder cannot be an awardee, shook the eligibility ground from under me. Oh. What a forceful logic! In a single move it reduced the number to five candidates. It might have sensed that the lure of gold slowly taking hold in my mind too – at least to retain one of the two coins. Next, it set sight on my wife’s credentials. Here it found the going tough as she presented two options – an eligible awardee, even without the ‘virtual’ based on stellar qualities. Ineligible on the ground that she is a “pro” and as such not eligible to contest amongst amateurs! I was confused with its political talk for a little while but it came up with another stunning logic – the noble metal in the periodic table is no match for this noble person. Now it wanted to run a ‘virtual contest’ - actually a qualifying heat, among the remaining competitors.

The brown matter inside my head yet again proved, that it is worth its weight in gold. Oh, no in platinum!(Or should it be Plutonium?). Even before the real contest could start, the number has come down to four. Here I was really annoyed at the way it started behaving and started fearing that it may eliminate the remaining contestants to lay claims on the gold coins – for itself! I decided to force my way in into its thinking process and keep a check on this unilateralism. During that day’s sleep I spoke to it and with some effort managed to convince the need for a co-chair. The carrot I dangled – that it was overburdened and my wife would be an excellent choice, not being a contender. Both of us slept peacefully, like pleased fairies.

The new award committee got down to business. Me and my wife started listing our ‘soft corners’ with respect to each of the contenders. As usual a bickering match started between us and started picking holes in the ‘soft corners’ to bring out the weakness in the reasoning. Amidst this emerging stalemate, she uttered a sentence - “All are now our children now and among them why make such a distinction?” Bowing to this astute reasoning, I dropped the ‘soft corner’ issue like hot potatoes.

Next we discussed the positives and negatives of each one of them. My forceful but slightly weak on points, did not wash with the co-chair. She put to rest my speculations simply with this point – “All suffer these traits and better to move forward with the positives and fundamentals” – a synopsis on her survey of human resources! I gave in meekly. But as a last ditch effort, I tried to bring in a new eligibility criteria – achievements. This motion was defeated as I could not give convincing replies to her queries – “On which scale, tangible or intangible, your standard or international standard?”

The brown matter- in my head, which was troubling me on and off till a few days ago, renounced me and took sanyas. I did the best thing under these circumstances – kept my mouth shut. Taking full control, she announced the winners – our grand children. Marvelling at her diplomacy, I agreed readily. I now have one positive feeling and one doubt. The positive feeling was that my legacy will live on. The doubt was whether I could plan for another ‘virtual’ heat at that time?

“Whom shall I ask?” is yet another doubt.