"With you, during your lifetime" and "with your family, after your lifetime (gets over!)" is how the LIC tagline reads. So I was just a wee bit curious about this concept called 'insurance' as a financial investment. Now and then I like to read up on the history of issues not directly related to our daily lives.
Sure all of us invest in the LIC, or, may be, some such private company, especially if you are the type who gets carried away by a foreign sounding name, and without getting to know its real meaning. That is quite crazy, and has its fun moments. Don't you believe me? Okay, how about the name "Nikita"?
Many Indian parents fancy it for a daughter. Well, in Russian, it is a male name. Remember Nikita Kruschev? So is it in Greek, where it means a male victor. The nearest Sanskrit word would be 'Niketan' which means a house! Sure, the name sounds feminine, while it really means something absolutely different! Crazy fun, right?
To get back to the LIC, its forefathers, it seems, came to India in the nineteenth century. Initially, it seems that only the British lives were considered worthy of insurance! The 'natives' were hardly worth such lordly treatment. How would they be? The colonisers had looted our treasures, imposed taxes on us, taken away our handicraft livelihoods through their 'evil factories', and had, moreover, inflicted severe famines on us!
Well, the LIC is quite some survivor if its roots come from such lop-sided 'firang' presumptions. Despite very many ups and downs, and turmoils, real or imagined and/or consciously crafted, it seems to be doing rather well for itself as supposedly the topmost insurance company in the country currently. Am I happy I have invested wisely!
Pratima@ To use Shakespeare's "tide" metaphor from 'Julius Caesar', there is a tide in human lives. How we ride it determines our destiny. Better though always to remember that there can be a reciprocal ebb, and better be prepared for it, may be, the LIC way!?!
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