What good is your money?

Khaleej Times (Life) / 23 February 2013

I was barely 12 when I wrote my first poem. It was titled, “What can money do?” Written at an age when I didn’t have a concrete notion of money in real, worldly terms, the poem was my first brush with words and wisdom.

I still cannot fathom what made me write about something that I had so little knowledge about— that is, the vacuous nature of wealth — but the poem became so popular in my immediate circle that it was published in my school magazine and circulated among relatives, who still consider it my best piece till date.

The poem could at best be defined as a rare occurrence of ideas that had nothing to do with what I was to become later in life. It was no indication of the values I would imbibe or the belief systems that would get indoctrinated in my adult life. It merely expressed a lofty thought that was beyond my years and experience.

The notion of wealth I had at that naïve age only got more tenuous as years passed by. Like many other things in life, it was difficult to put a post-it note on wealth as either a virtue or a vice. I found it difficult to dismiss it as superfluity, even as I realised that it wasn’t all that one existed for. Experience had taught that money was necessary to sustain physical and social life, but the ever-changing parameters of ‘need’ and ‘want’ distorted my views time and again. It was nearly impossible to spell the importance of wealth, more, its use and purpose beyond food, clothing and shelter.

For all the philosophical opinion we hold and disburse at will about materialism and its futility, I suspected if we could let go of our riches and relinquish our positions even if we made billions, if anyone who has built an empire by dint of his labour can give off a share without agonising over the attrition, however small; if we could ever say, ‘enough’ and gift the excess away. Soon, the squiggles in my head found answers in philanthropic anecdotes about some famous, rich people. The cosmos responds to our questions if we ask hard enough.

As if to endorse my newfound beliefs, I read about Warren Buffet gifting 600 million dollars worth of company stocks to his children on his birthday last year, not to add to their assets, but to run their charity. The man’s life and his mammoth proportions of wealth has always amazed me, but this time what transformed my perception of the super rich dad was the grand objective behind the transit of money. I found a new meaning and purpose to the act of bequeathing wealth to one’s offspring. The fact that the rich dad has rich kids who have more than enough to spare the millions for charity cannot take away from the spirit of the generous action. That they had the will to share was inspiring enough.

When Bill Gates recently said that he had no utility for money beyond a point, I wished I had the firm conviction, if not the wherewithal to say the same. I feel overwhelmed when I imagine that someday I would make such massive money to be able to say that, but should that happen by a quirk of fate, I wonder if my soul would expand in tandem to give a huge share away. It’s a daunting contemplation I would rather pass up now.

Today, my perception of wealth as merely a means to worldly comforts has altered. Being rich need not be a state of self-centered delusion that provides for materialistic variables alone. I am becoming increasingly aware that possessing wealth has many noble dimensions beyond the limited confines of personal use. It is a view that is so different from the one I had several years ago as an impressionable 12-year-old.

All that glitters...

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 5 February 2013

 

Just as poignant I feel about the anomalies in life and disappointed with the violations in the world, I feel equally amused by the eccentricities that are put on show by the quirky lot among us.

The kind of odd things we sometimes do tickles me, even when they cannot be dismissed as petty, considering the enormity of the situations.

Recently, there was a report on how a daughter in India decided to take legal action against against her father, who gifted her imitation jewellery for her wedding. Considering the skyrocketing prices at which gold is selling these days, and the parents’s desire to send their daughter(s) utterly decked up in gold that makes onlookers feels jaundiced in his eyes, this was bound to happen sooner or later.

I must admit that we Indians are famous for our love for the bling-bling. Baroque and Indianness are inseparable. I have lost count of the number of times I have been asked about the heavy neck chain that I wear as part of my mangalsutra. “Do you always wear this?” the Filipina at the salon asked me once. I nodded. “You are very rich,” she quipped. “Nothing about wealth, just tradition,” I explained.

But how much of our ornamental leanings is actually tradition and how much unadulterated vanity is a debatable topic. But the truth of the matter is that our cravings for ostentatious things have made us such hopeless freaks that a dad, and a well-heeled one in the daughter’s version of the story, chooses to give his daughter counterfeit gifts.

The same love for the gold has made Indian women good bets for those in the artificial jewellery business. No jokes, unless you are so savvy to see the real from the rolled one, anyone can easily pass one for the other. Two cases in point — I was at a shop recently looking for some imitation stuff (come on, who said I was immune to the bling fever?). As I was haggling and trying the ear rings out, the salesman asked, “What are you wearing on your ears now?”

“Er..diamonds,” I said, eyeing him suspiciously, and tightening my grip on the originals.

“How are these different from yours? No one can make out the difference, madam.”

I ‘bling’ed and felt like a complete idiot. So why on this good earth did I spend those hefty Dirham bills last year?

In another place, when I argued over the price of an artificial ‘uncut diamond’ piece, the guy dictated airily that I take a walk down the road, look at the things on gold shop windows, come back and tell him if I found any difference except in the price tag. The man seemed to know his business.

I went, and believe you me — certain things in the gold store looked not a shade more real to me than the ones at the artificial shop. Some even looked tarnished and junky. They said it was the antique kind and the seemingly lacklustre chunks hark back to the historic times. “Jodha Akbar, madam,” said the salesman, but his clever sales pitch neither made me feel like Jodhabai nor Ashwariya Rai. Wedged between two ranks of ornaments, I got seriously reflective about how the real and the bogus had overlapped in our lives and how the space between them had got so nebulous that only the most discerning eye could tell the difference. Truth and lie have become interchangeable.

Honesty now looks pricey and antiquated. Deceit looks easy and inexpensive. We wear glitzy masks to cover malice and meanness, and peddle ourselves as ornaments to each other. It suits our pretensions and satisfies our self love. No one can ever make out the travesty of our times because it has become so invasive and inseparable. I surveyed my life and wondered if on several occasions I wasn’t like the dad who gifted his daughter the imitation stuff? It was moot point to ponder.

With compliments

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 9 February 2013

There was a time when diaries, calendars and fountain pens made for great corporate gifts.  As kids, we eagerly looked forward to our father to bring them home at the beginning of the year. Sometimes there was such a surfeit of stuff that the diaries were used for practising school composition and hand writing, and every room in the house had a calendar for decoration. The pens were kept in safe custody and handed out on special occasions such as exams or an essay writing contest in school.

Those were the times when the compliments, as we fondly called them, were innocuous gestures that acknowledged good will between business associates. They were just part of corporate camaraderie, and to some extent a promotional tool for the brand, that was accepted and reciprocated, almost like exchanging sweets on Diwali, Eid or Christmas.

But things have changed and how! We are some weeks into the New Year and I don’t have a calendar on my walls yet. Since I have no major use for diaries and pens, thanks to the superfluity of gadgets around here, I don’t rue their absence. But I miss the calendars. It is not that compliments have become an outdated concept, it just that they are not anymore what they used to be – simple gestures of business good will. Corporate gifts have now gone high tech with tabs, smart phones and the like going out to clients and customers, making the giveaways look more inductive and influential than appreciative.

The methods of complimenting these days are so lofty that it makes one suspect the purpose. Is it more to entice than to encourage? Does it play on the agenda of buying people out than paying tribute to their association? For securing prospective deals than to build relationships? No matter how covert the agenda, it is hard to ignore it. Let us accept it - showing carrot is not a new human tendency. It is just that we have discovered discreet ways of doing it. Cynical as it may sound, yet much of what we give is for winning favours in return than out of a generous spirit. It is a deeply entrenched habit in us, which we have now converted into a tradition. We promise our children presents if they will excel in the exams, we buy people gifts so that we stay in their good books, we tip the cleaner at the carwash so that we get more than the customary service...why, we even turn the cartoon channel on to induce our toddlers into eating or allow an extra hour of PS3 to our boys and a day out for our girls if they do our bidding.

Knowingly or not, we have cultivated a character that looks for easy routes to achieving goals. We have now found better backhand strategies for clinching deals and seeking favour. When it is open and naive, we call it a compliment. When it is clandestine and devious, we call it a bribe. When we do it in our private circles, we call it a token. When it is done in the public domain, we call it kickbacks. And when the proportions are big and scope is infinite, we just brand it as corruption.

The concept of giving and taking is too complex to understand. It is tough to define what is fair and what is unscrupulous, for there is a huge grey area in between. What probably determines its moral standards is the intention that drives the act. Often the intention is less than complimentary and charitable. Just as bitter is the truth that there are no friendships without self interest, there are probably no giveaways without an agenda. It would be foolhardy to imagine that it is all out of love and kindness, for believe me, there truly are no free lunches in this world!