I met a colleague recently who’d been out for a week. Holiday, I asked with just the right note of envy in my voice. Nope, he said, medical emergency—mum had a stroke. And then he cracked up. All through the hospital stay, he said, he was replaying what I would keep telling him—get a medical cover. He said he meant to but kept putting it off. He was also banking on the workplace cover he thought covered him and his dependants. But he realised at the hospital that the company, in an austerity move, had reduced the cover to his nuclear family and chucked out his dependent parents from the group cover. He dipped into his savings, of course. But the thought that the entire expense running into several lakh rupees could have come out of a policy left him really upset. It’s like discovering you’ve forgotten your mobile charger just as you step into the aircraft for a week-long trip, he said. It’s that oh-shoot moment in your life.