Saving for when?
The day you realize the subtle difference between ‘wealthy’ and ‘rich’ is also the day you know better about the worldly machinations. A person can be born in to a wealthy family and, by association, can be called wealthy. However, a person needs to climb up the stairs of growth — either transactional or otherwise — to consider oneself rich. Wealth is about money. Richness is open to interpretations and mostly derives from the quality of life one chooses to lead.
For the record, I belong to the “tax-paying” category who, by default, give themselves too much credit for the development of the country. For some risible reason, paying what’s due makes somebody better than those who aren’t in the position to pay. Of course, I am not considering the frauds who are synonymous with black money. And while we are at it, this categorywallahs will remain shy from calling themselves rich, even after knowing that they constitute less than 5% of the entire population. They’ve technically made it in life and yet they take false comfort in the most millennial of all Urdu words: gareeb.
On the surface, this farcical modesty rests on a so-called middle class desi value (or virtue, if you may): the desire to get ahead in life via academic success. Although it sounds like a noble pursuit of happiness, there are so many hollowed caveats here. For starters, there is hardly any scrutiny on when exactly is an individual supposed to pause and quantify. Going by the set standards, irrespective of city or region, you are supposed to only focus on your success — society be damned! Which is why our country manages to produce very few — comparatively speaking, for a nation of 1.3+ billion — who bother to give back to where they come from. The prevalent idea is to get away and never look back.
Such a narrow sentiment makes sense for those who hail from the slums or worse — the lowest of available categories. As Divine succinctly expressed in his song titled Teesri Manzil: “…aur gully ki madat karni to gully se nikaal..” — to lift somebody from the gutter, somebody has to get out of the gutter. For a person from chawl to prosper, it’s important that they zoom out. But what about those who are supposed to zoom in and see where they can contribute instead of simply pointing fingers at invisible forces of the system? Unka time kab aayega?
This self-centered attitude towards the outside world peels us away from the possibility of ever reaching the state of self-awareness. An existence gathers meaning when it’s spent on goals bigger than the self. And we can shape a more-giving future only by confronting our more-taking present. Unless we take baby steps in this direction, we’ll continue to focus on ourselves and let others rot.
Our preceding generation instilled a sense of responsibility and achievement in us and we should be grateful for the same. However, it’s high time we re-evaluated our standing principles. How many times have you heard an Indian parent goad their wards to spread the seed of education that they were privileged enough to get? Or for that matter, when does a table conversation ever deal with the amount of charity or welfare a person should be doing? If you can’t answer these two questions, maybe you’ll get the answer why people are more secretive about their salary packages than Putin is about his geopolitical ambitions.
Lastly, Native Americans might be diverse but one notion was common to all the tribes: wealth is not created by hoarding more than one’s need but by giving away even when one is in need.
Rich indeed.
