Credit Rule

Credit Rule is the sort of rule a grandfather gives you on a veranda — short, plain, and annoyingly correct.

The rule protects you from your future self — the fellow who will be tired, hungry, and full of reasons to make an exception. Rules exist for the days when reasons are cheap.

What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.

Consider the chit fund in a small town. It survives not on contracts but on the shame of defaulting before neighbours. Reputation is the oldest collateral in India.

Money is a good clerk and a terrible master; the arrangement is entirely up to us. The idea has done its job if, the next time it happens to you, you smile before you react.