As youngsters, we could never figure it out. As adults, it has been a mystery to us, but we consider ourselves mature enough to accept the strange ways of the world.
So, when the rest of India talks about people with assets that are disproportionate to their known sources of income and about those with bank lockers filled with gold jewellery and property deeds, we nod sagely.
‘It happens.’
All our lives, our assets were disproportionate to our income and we always wondered why.
Why did our friends whose fathers were in government posts, like our father, have cash to spend — when we had none? Why did they have gold bangles around their wrists and gold chains around their necks — when we had never seen any of that precious metal in our home or among our relatives beyond the mandatory wedding ring? Why did their mothers have wardrobes full of clothes from all parts of the country and why did our mother take to her sewing machine or squint far into the night to make her own ‘designer’ blouses to give her outfits the appearance of haute couture?
How did they build their retirement homes way before retirement, give them on rent, earn back all they had spent and then when they finally finished with their jobs, walk into a fully-paid-for palatial house with no loans to repay — while our father spent all his retirement benefits on his cottage and then continued to live from hand to mouth on his pension as he had on his salary ...
Multiply infinitely
Weddings came and went in our family — and no gold was bought or presented — or even looked at longingly. Gold was not a commodity that was cared about and if its value doubled, tripled or multiplied infinitely, it was good for all those who had the money to buy it, but we were not interested. If we had to have glitter, costume jewellery would do just as well, wouldn’t it?
Having the good business sense to ‘invest in gold’, of course, was never talked about. Talking money and business and investment was not our parents’ cup of tea — and naturally it didn’t become ours either ...
It was no different when we got married. Somehow, like water finds its own level, we managed to find spouses who were as monetarily challenged as ourselves and whose parents were pretty much like our parents, finance-wise — or should I say finance-unwise?
And so we went on to live from one month’s salary to the next — and usually were broke through the entire last week of the month ... and quite content, even proud, to be so!
Colleagues and friends with the same income as ours didn’t have the same problem. There was always talk among them of some small investment they had made or an asset they had acquired. Instead of taking a cue from them as we listened, we made half-hearted excuses and went out and got yet another football for our pet to chew to her heart’s content because she could never resist a ball that size, and some ‘neat’ (though inexpensive) toy for our son to share — and break — with his friends. We knew it would be in bits by the end of the day — but that expression of wonder on their faces when they tried to pull it apart ... How could we give up those joys and instead hold onto the pennies and try to make them into pounds, until some day in the distant future we could have a sufficiently large financial base from which we could go on to earn a fortune?
And so it went — from generation unto generation. No gold. No jewels. No assets. No worries.
Aren’t we a happy lot today?
Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.
