The other day I was reading an article, How to Attract Money into your Wallet, mainly because the pandemic has disrupted the regular way of making money.
There are various sure-fire ways to attract wealth into your back pocket, but none of them mention keeping your wife’s picture in the wallet, in the slot with the plastic window, from where she smirks at you every time you flip the wallet open.
(Some others keep their kids’ pictures in the wallet, to be reminded that they still have to pay for their expensive college education abroad).
Ever since credit cards were invented, I have never carried any cash in my wallet. I remember when my first salary was credited into my bank, I started getting offers and pleas to make my life easier, and to go plastic.
Many people were fearful of the cards, just like some who are terrified to enter the stock market, and my friends did not trust the free money they were offered. Some of them still go to banks and stand in long queues today (despite the dangers of catching a deadly infection) in this age of online banking, and also to withdraw cash from the ATM machines, that they can touch and trust.
Flaunting their cards
But some others realised they are now rich and would flaunt their cards (Gold or Platinum), which was unlike my measly ‘Silver’, and boasted of the lounge facilities they receive every time they fly out.
Slowly, I started accumulating credit cards and one day, spread them on the dining table and boasted to my wife that we now have instant access to hundreds of thousands.
Then I started hearing strange stories of couples who were not only living pay cheque to pay cheque, but were also juggling their lives with three or four credit cards; one to buy groceries, one to pay the kid’s school fees and one to borrow money from, to pay for the first two necessities.
Then many people realised there is no such thing as a free lunch. One month when I forgot to pay off the credit card bill I received a call from some guy, in the middle of the night, who said polite things at first and then threatened to break my bones and smash me into a round leather ball and kick me down the street where I lived, if I didn’t immediately pay back the interest.
Brand-new teeth for your mom
When banks came to know I was a good customer, they started offering me more free money. “We will give you a personal loan, four-times your salary. Now, you can marry off your daughter, or go off to the holiday in Venice you always wanted to, or get brand-new teeth for your mother.”
Some smarter people started making more money out of these free loans, by remitting tons of money back home to make money on the ridiculously high exchange rate, until one day the value of the currency suddenly dipped.
Then bankers started making snide remarks that people today have no financial acumen and they are financially illiterate, because the kids are not taught how to save money and make money work for you, while the bankers themselves kept ripping off the customers and sometimes even disappearing with the cash and going off to those offshore places where no one can catch you.
Anyway, the article said one of the ways to attract money to your wallet, was to put some grains of rice in it, as rice represents good life and abundance, and it would surely attract positive energy, or put in a leaf from a particular tree.
I looked into my wallet and there were sheaves of credit card stubs, someone’s passport-size picture, a visiting card of some guy who fixes dish antennas on the roof and a mysterious telephone number.
I put in the lucky charms, and the other day my wife, who usually takes money from my wallet, said I should be thankful to her as she has cleaned out my wallet. “There was food and trash in it,” she said.
Mahmood Saberi is a storyteller and blogger based in Bengaluru, India. Twitter: @mahmood_saberi
