Dealing with Market Turbulence

Recently, while on a flight to Bangalore, I was sitting next to a young man. I noticed him praying when the flight took off and in fact he looked very scared all through the take-off phase. Every time there was turbulence, he would call the cabin crew for help. I decided to get him talking to divert his attention, and his first comment was, “I will never fly again”. His name was Aasif, a young engineer who was flying for the very first time in his life. A computer engineer, recently hired by Microsoft, Aasif was being sent for training in Bangalore, before leaving for the US. I asked him, if he couldn’t be at ease in a two hour flight, how would he manage traveling all the way to the US? He was honest enough to admit that he had requested Microsoft to send him train tickets for the Bangalore but the company did not oblige. I got him talking about his life, to which he...