Tag: Money

  • Dolby Diwali!!

    ..and as i type this, i can hear today’s show getting started.. Yes, a few days back, I had written about festivals becoming homogeneous in the urban milieu, but I was answered by color lit night skies and sounds that could make a world war proud!! Deepavali, from its humble of origins of ‘festival of lights’ has become an extravaganza of light and sound!!

    I had this (perhaps strange) perception that the slum behind our apartment would have been the biggest culprit in the neighbourhood, but I was in for a surprise when i ventured out into the balcony. Only a single house in the slum was bursting crackers, and those were only ‘rockets’ whose only audio contribution is a small ‘whoosh’. On the other side, an apartment complex, where the monthly rental is anywhere between 75k to a few lakhs, had embarked on this ‘break the decibel record every second’ project. I missed having a good war game on the comp, the sound effects would have been just awesome!!

    I wonder how many crackers my childhood Deepavali allowance would get me now. Perhaps, half a cracker. But i had fun then, and excitement. I see today’s kids excited too,  after all it is an avenue to establish superiority. No, not like when I was a kid, and the superiority contests were of bravery – who would light the cracker, who would hold the cracker longest and so on, but more of the ‘how many crackers did your dad buy for you?’ kind. I’m glad to see their parents having fun too, and living their second childhood. They ask their friends, “so, how much did you spend for diwali?”

    It is perhaps a testament to a changed world order – from one of sharing to one of selfishness and one upmanship. Deepavali is indeed a festival of lights, i ranted about it, and now feel light 😀

    until next time, the sweets don’t make me feel light though!!

  • Value for money

    A term that is bandied about a lot these days, especially since we live in an era of consumer monsters, who insist on getting every paise’s worth. But i remember the time when two of the words were used differently, and remember the generation which worked hard to make us understand the value of money. That generation lived most of their life before liberalisation, and are yet to come to terms with the plethora of choices that are now on offer.

    It hit me a few days back, when I was sitting in a desserts joint working my way through a chocolate mound, and saw a man, perhaps in his early sixties looking into the shop, and for a fleeting second, at me. The melancholic look said it all. The look of a man, who has perhaps spent an entire working life making sure that his family was well provided for, that his kids got a good education, and they had a home they could call their own, and while doing all these, mostly missed out on things that he’d like to have done.

    And now, when the kids are all grown up, and he finally has the time, he realises the world has changed, and the value of money has been drastically altered, and that the plans he might have made are rendered useless, thanks to the prices and the amount of people who are capable of and willing to pay a premium for the same services. People, like his own children, who work hard to make sure they earn enough to pay the premium, and end up not having enough time for the people who kickstarted their lives.

    Long ago, when he gave up that new shirt piece, so that his child could have a new toy, could he have imagined that one day, his child could buy shirts from brands he thought would never see in India, but not have time to remember the toy his father had once bought for him? Could he have imagined this was the way it would all turn out to be? And after he looks at me through the window that separates our worlds, i look at myself, and wonder whether it’ll all work out the way we plan, or will we also be unable to comprehend the lives we bring out into the world?


    until next time, values

  • The more things change…

    the more they remain the same….

    Gandhi was the man they followed then, we still do..
    until next time, happy birthday India.

  • The Answer lies

    In the soft breeze that blows across your face and makes you feel alive
    and the hurricane that sweeps across the face of the earth and makes you pray for life
    the innocent toothless grin of a toddler about to embark on his life’s journey
    and the toothless grin of an 80 year old who has seen everything on his life’s journey
    the starlit sky that makes you humble and contemplative of life
    and the stars that can predict everything that happens in your life
    the minds of those who left their progenitors to live their own life
    and in the minds of those whose are left by their progeny to live their own life
    the white blood cells whose cancerous growth threatens life
    and the defficiency of white blood cells in the immune system that threatens life
    the fire whose invention changed the destiny of humanity
    and the fire in you that could change humanity
    the money that can be used to better millions of lives
    and all the money that cant save even one life
    the minds of those who ask questions but cant wait for the answer
    and the minds of those who are unquestoning and accept the answers

    until next time, yes, my friends, it is blowin in the wind

  • Its all about money, honey?

    That was borrowed from the tagline of indiainfoline.com, i dont see it much these days, wonder if they still use it…but that also is what i am going to write on today…i am reading ‘india unbound’ by gurcharan das(see my medialist), almost finished it…and i am able to relate yesterday’s post to some of the stuff in the book…so, will continue on the path….but i believe, i will be backtracking by the time i finish the entire series..today’s generation, as compared to the ones earlier, gets a lot of money related happiness, mostly because of rising consumerism, which has almost enveloped the more developed countries and is rapidly aadvancing in india…we like to have things literally at our fingertips, and the mouse is a powerful tool.. we order books, gifts and many other things under the sun online, it definitely is convenient….the mobile is also a powerful tool, most of the restaurants here, have introduced home delivery, again the fingertips can get the job done….result of all this is a decrease in the kind of social interaction we grew up with…and whether it is online purchases or home delivery, there is definitely an extra price we pay for it……the BPOs (call centers, in regular parlance) that are spreading like a virus, not necessarily with the same dire consequences, hehe, they are either making calls or receiving calls,giving customers from far flung corners of the globe, info about a variety of products and services….so we have convenience, better economies coz these call center employees make good money, so more disposable income….but are we losing ourselves in the turn of the merry go round, why do we have waves of nostalgia? why do we turn to our blogs as outlets? a query, can our generation produce a bhagat singh or an aung san suu kyi, who would endure purely for what they believe in …..we have, but in a different mould, more on that tomorrow…. leaving you with
    manuscrypts trivia
    ‘If somebody gives you a free ticket for a tour, you cannot fight with the person because of the troubles you meet while on the journey.’….leena chandavarkar, on life