Page 21 - Seniorstoday June 2024 Issue

Alaimentary
Why Reverse the Sunset
Moments
When faced with a diminishing cash flow situation, the home that many senior
citizens would have can come to the rescue, writes Nagesh Alai
The other day I got a call from a
nonagenarian widower family friend, living
in Avanashi, a rural town based in Tamil
Nadu, seeking my advice relating to his
one-bedroom apartment in a six decades old
society in the swanky Warden Road area of
Mumbai. Apparently, he had mortgaged it
to a bank for a temporary loan years ago to
finance his business. As luck would have it,
his business went downhill due to intense
competition and crashing prices and he was
unable to repay his loan. He had to shift out
from the city to his place of birth where he
had his ancestral home and lead a spartan
life.
He had been used to living well, not
ostentatious though, during his heydays.
He and his wife were well meaning folks
who would often drop into our home and
spend time with our parents and us in our
SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #60 | JUNE 2024
growing up days. He was one of the earliest
clients of my father who was a practising
CA and where I got my grounding in the
world of finance and law. He had migrated
to the big city with a dream and had built
up a trading business in steel and was
doing quite well. He was highly leveraged
and used to fund his business from
borrowings and repay from future earnings
and cash flows of the business. He liked
driving and used to buy the latest models
of Ambassadors and Fiats of the hoary
times. He would buy the latest car, use it
for a maximum of three years (the tenor of
the car loan that he invariably took) and
then sell it only to buy the latest model. He
liked his cars to be in tip-top condition and
did not believe in owning them to become
costly relics eventually. They did not have
any children. About a quarter century ago,
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