Forensic Audit of a Life

I was working in a Lala company around 2007 and I was friendly with the head of our finance department. One day I saw him pacing furiously in his cabin, chewing his nails nervously and sweating buckets. I asked him what seems to be the issue and he replied that the audit process is ongoing.

As you know, Lala companies have a very lackadaisical attitude towards processes, regulations and norms. So people in the company would do a lot of sketchy stuff depending upon how much power they had. The finance head would try to ignore all this throughout the year but during the audit, that became impossible and he had to answer some really tough questions. Because an honest audit spares nothing and nobody. You have to explain all the emergency expenses, all the write-offs and all the process deviations. And the auditor's final report is an uncomfortable reminder how badly you screwed up.

In my retirement calculation sheet, the life expectancy is designated as 90. And my 45th birthday is coming up in a few weeks. Which technically means I may have reached the halfway point of my life. And this seems like a good time to conduct an audit of my own.

The forensic audit of my life till date.

Financial Health

My net worth is 2.4 crore INR. Is that good, bad or just average? There is no thumb rule regarding how much one needs to have earned by a specific age. One way to look at it would be that my net worth puts me in the top 1% in India and in the top 10% globally. That sounds good, right? But if you look at it in another way….almost all my MBA batch mates have more corpus than me. That doesn't sound too good.

To me, both approaches feel wrong. The right metric is… how much I need versus how much I have. And even by conservative estimates, it seems that my money will outlast me. That's good enough for me.

Physical Health

In my last company, I had told my boss that the day I get six pack abs, I am coming to the office shirtless. My boss said unconcernedly that it will never come to pass as he has complete confidence in my lethargy. Damn that accurate bastard!

I had wanted to attain six pack abs since forever. And I always consoled myself that the reason that I don't have a six pack till now is that it requires a dedicated fitness regimen and exact nutrition which I cannot sustain for long while I am working. So when I retired in October 2021, that excuse went out of the window. And today in May 2025, I am nowhere close to my dream.

Don't get me wrong… I diet and exercise regularly and that has yielded some good results. All my internal organs are working fine as per my annual check ups, I have decent stamina, I weigh 60 kg with a 30 inch waist. But the stubborn belly fat just won't move. Also, I have a skinny-fat physique; bony arms and shoulders with portly torso. That's no bueno. I need to put in more effort in muscle building but for that I will have to lift heavier weights. That increases the risk of injury. Between this and my lethargy, the only solution seems to be hiring a personal trainer for 6 months. But that's in the future. For now, within the perview of this audit, I am a TubbyPython.

Mental Health

Over the 17 years of my corporate career, I had regularly experienced low-key anxiety, frustration, rage and helplessness. Which contributed to a lot of mental anguish by the time I turned 40. But post retirement, most of it is gone. It's interesting how serene you feel when you don't have to do meaningless assignments while dealing with infuriating colleagues. But it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

I did make a vow of becoming a better person at the time of my retirement. But my Narcissism is still unabated, I still have anger issues and my long term project about developing compassion is still in the cold storage. After retirement, having this much bandwidth and not using it to improve my mental health feels criminal.

Relationships

I definitely screwed the pooch on this one. I did not regularly keep in touch with my school friends, relatives I was close to once and elders who loved me when I was a kid. I could have saved a lot many relationships had I made an honest attempt. I devoted all my attention to my dreams, hobbies and wellbeing. Now my former close friends are strangers, the cousins with whom I spent some memorable summer vacations are not even in my phone directory and I really wish I had gotten the chance to say goodbye to some elders who passed away in recent years.

On the flip side, I have been staying with my parents for the last 3 years since retirement and that has improved our relationship. I am able to help out a lot more with grocery shopping, banking related tasks, household repairs, doctor visits etc. Over the years, I had disobeyed them a lot. These last 3 years helped us to understand each other better and brought us closer.

Purpose

Every company has a mission statement. It can be clear and actionable like Google’s (To organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful). Or it can be vague and confusing like Yahoo's (To be the most essential global internet service for consumers and businesses). Either way, a company has to have a mission statement. But does that hold true at a personal level too? That a person has to have a mission statement equivalent; a purpose of life?

The reason this is an important question is because in a company audit, auditors check if the activities performed by the company throughout the year are in-line with the company's mission statement. That the company is not venturing into areas which would take it away from fulfilling the mission statement. Similarly, in a life audit, one has to ensure that things they do are in line with their purpose of life. Right? Meh..

I personally don't believe there is such a thing as a preordained purpose of life. Maybe that's the key difference between a human and a corporation. When I die, I might find out that I was very wrong on this account but for now, I am sticking to my guns. At best, my purpose of life can be described as ‘To keep BachelorPython content’. And I am very much sure that most of my activities are serving that purpose.

Growth and Learning

All the best companies try to better themselves every year. They invest a lot in R&D, acquire cutting edge technology and hire the best talent.

My equation with learning was complicated. Over the first 40 years of my life, I had to learn so many useless things. During school it was Trigonometry and Sanskrit, during engineering it was Fluid Mechanics and Transport Phenomena and during MBA, Human Resource Management. Not to mention countless tools, applications I had to master during my 17 years of corporate career. So by the time I retired, I had developed mental fatigue about learning new things.

Don't get me wrong; I genuinely believe in lifelong learning. The TOMORROW YOU should be better than the TODAY YOU; even if by a tiny margin. But I just can't seem to summon enough mental energy to learn new things. Even if those are the things I genuinely want to learn; like guitar and Spanish. Regular readers of my blog may remember me mentioning my desire to learn guitar and Spanish in a post written immediately after my retirement. The needle hasn't moved on that in the last 3 years even a tiny bit.

Auditor Remarks

All this does not sound good, does it? And this is the life audit of BachelorPython… who is simply not a Purush… rather, Mahapurush. But that's the forensic audit for you. It is supposed to throw a harsh light on your face, show you the mirror and not worry about your feelings. At first, you may be shocked into silence after seeing the dark circles, pimples, double chin, receding hairline and what have you. But only after acknowledging their existence, can you then take corrective measures.

So yeah, we all need to play auditor in our own lives at regular intervals. A little self-investigation can reveal where we’re leaking time, energy or common sense. Think of it like Marie Kondo-ing your decisions: if it doesn’t spark growth, maybe it’s time to let it go. As Socrates wisely said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. So let’s audit ourselves, ruefully smile at the mess and get back on track.