The benefits in the fringe:

The retiree kept raking his brain to find out whether he had become a fringe element in the household, to enjoy some fringe benefits? 

The reality was presenting a different picture. He found himself gradually getting drafted to do sundry tasks in the household. Thinking that all of those unfinished tasks he had left, pre-superannuation, now might have taken a vengeful rebirth to taunt him. Then, he was saddled up to be ridden and now getting flogged, in addition. Still, to pay his dues, he obliged and did his best to the extent possible.

Like on the job, the initial days after superannuation left him wondering whether he had stepped into a dream land. Everyone bent backwards to ease him into his new role. To his dismay he found out soon, that he was not much different from the dejected fox. The grapes started turning sour, too soon to his liking. 

Coming to the present, he understood the value of the training he had received prior to retirement, of course that went with a job description. In his current placement, neither he has a job description nor in any position to demand one. This environment, even after gaining a few years of work experience in the household, irked him no less. Not in haste to construct a bridge over the water, he bided his time for the water level to recede. What a better way it would be to stand and deliver the mettle of his long experience! Whether he would go ahead and do it or not, the very act of thinking about the bridge and water gave him some satisfaction.

A typical day ran with a routine and once in a while words of wisdom got exchanged between him and the other members of the household, mostly it was one-way traffic - from them to him. Though not much different from his pre-retirement life, there was a small difference then - sometimes he was able to give and at other times it was from his superiors.

When sunlight breaks through for the day, a sleepy voice mumbles, "switch on the geyser". The please is left unsaid and he mentally added it to feel better. As though waiting for this, another voice joins "collect the milk sachets and leave the drop bag in its place properly". He understood the 'will you please' , that should have been used by an adult, as mentioned. Swallowing his pride, grumbling within the walls of his mouth, he starts the chores. His day just started with several execute command buttons getting frantically pressed, many times over. He wondered whether the super computers, crunching trillion bits per second, have those many buttons for a man-machine interaction!

 After this wakeup ritual, the rush hour arrives. While packing and sending children off to school, voices accuse him of misplacing books, sox or ID cards and forgetting to shine their shoes. This is the thanksgiving he invariably got for volunteering to ease their last minute tension. Not done yet, questions follow  - did you see my charger any where, got the medicines yesterday, called the electrician, where is my helmet and so on.  Mission is accomplished, for the day, but not before mouthing leftover recriminations and hastily fired instructions mixing the past and present tenses. The helmeted-warriors hurry out - leaving him like a chandelier hanging from the roof, without power supply. 

 The calm after the storm arrives. Unfolding the Newspaper, he walks to a corner in the foyer and tries to quickly read the headlines. Almost on signal, a shrill voice of one of the warriors, shouted through the gullet and admonished him to switch off the lights and close the front door. He neither switched on the lights nor opened the door, wondering why the shrill voice is not directed to the ears of the offenders. Even if he had attempted a reply, it would not have reached the AirPods adorned ears. Realising the futility in taking up the issue, he does as told, muttering to himself, "This drill sergeant's voice could have made easily me into a fine soldier."  

Running his hand through the non-existent crop of hair, he sighed with distraught and wondered where to go for a hair transplant! One thing he could not understand was who to blame himself or the superannuation? Though he knew the answer, he was not yet prepared to acknowledge it.

When the cacophony subsided, he calmly sat near a window, though it offered him only the view of a paint-peeling wall of another apartment across the road. By the time he remembered to read the newspaper, a crashing sound assailed his eardrums from the washing machine and jolted him out of his seat. The irony was the machine came with a seven-year guarantee for silent running! Then, a procession of courier deliveries made him to hop, skip and jump through the routine of receiving and sorting by the addressee. Surely, they could find time to do on-line shopping but not to spend some of it with him!

Discarding the newspaper, anyways the world would have changed much by then, he chose to remain quiet. Alone time brought back memories of his active participation in shepherding his children through educational pursuits, from baby-sitting to graduation ceremonies. That was a willing venture but now his extended service looks a bit downgraded to that of a caretaker, robbing the pleasure of really helping the grand children with homework and try a little mentoring. The grown-ups never forgot to remind him, "From your times to our times, the education had come away from simple to difficult and now to complex state. Don't confuse the children, in the guise of tutoring them."  

In the day-to-day life, we use numbers for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The numbers themselves do not have a sense of their value and sit with another without any issue. They even do not know that a zero on the left adds no value to the number whereas on the right it enhances the value ten-fold. As a matter of fact, the zero doesn't even know about the dual role it plays in the game of numbers. The grand children may not realise and understand but what about the grown-ups? Have I not been upgrading my grasp of subjects, all these years. Don't they even trust me?

He found out, doing these mental gymnastics did not help him in anyway. Soon the children will arrive, later the parents will arrive to start a second session - and life has to go on without a hitch. Amidst their daily grind, little do they appreciate his physical and mental support. Maybe they all will realise one day or the other. He recollected having read or heard these lines: " Borrow a leaf from the tree, be useful in whatever small way possible. Switch off the lamp of expectation, the worrying insects will go away."

Now, he was prepared to acknowledge the reason - It is his love for the family, and he could not blame the superannuation. He concluded with satisfaction, that probably this is the purpose of superannuation.