|
Published
in Gulf News, April 11, 2006
Will work for
words
There
were
12 of us in our high school class. Now, 16 years after school, many
of us live outside India - mainly in the US. Every so often, someone
visits Bangalore, and the class gathers again.
I find
these meetings difficult because many of my classmates are both
highly smug and highly successful. A couple of them have inherited
businesses and are extremely wealthy. Others are in management or
IT and are highly placed in some of the world's leading companies.
The
conversation invariably leads to money - not how much a person is
earning of course - but investments made, cars bought, holidays
had, electronics owned. It happened again one recent evening when
we met at the huge, professionally decorated apartment of one classmate
to celebrate the visit of another from New York.
"So
what are you all doing now?"
"I
live in Paris and run the global operations of my company."
"I
oversee projects for my company and lead teams of developers in
India and the US."
"My
iron and steel business is going well - I've just bought ten properties
across Bangalore."
"Gautam,
what about you?"
"I'm…
well… I'm still a writer. Sort of."
"Ah.
Who do you write for?"
"Ohhh…
various people."
For
some reason, this seemed to impress them. I wasn't convinced though,
and sat in silence through the telling of exploits in Mexico, offshore
tax breaks, acres of land outside Bangalore and houses by the lake
in the US. Finally, I fell into conversation with a classmate I
had been close to in school, and rediscovered why we were friends.
He was feeling just as out of place.
When
it was over, I slunk back home and sat at my computer. I thought
about my freelance fees that had seemed handsome up to then and
wondered how they could possibly compare with selling tons of steel
at a huge profit. Or living on expatriate perks and salary in Paris.
My
wife came to the rescue. "What exactly do you want all that
money for? Aren't we happy?"
My
instinct was to say, "Yes, but if we had more, we could do
more, and be happier." I quickly realised I had fallen into
the biggest trap of our times.
My
wife, bless her, continued. "Can you see yourself doing that?
Working like crazy for a company, managing a business, travelling
all the time - do you even want to get into something like that?"
I shook
my head.
"Then?"
Then
I smiled and thought about how easy it is forget the cliché
that tons of money rarely buys happiness. I remembered that when
I'm not in a group of hyper-successful peers, I'm quite content
with my lot. In retrospect, two of my classmates seemed so extravagantly
happy, it's likely we weren't only ones they were trying to convince.
I remembered
how one of the girls zeroed in on my wife when she heard that she
also worked in IT. The girl fired a series of questions that quickly
established where my wife stood in the IT pecking order. My wife,
one of the few pure souls I know who is above these games, gave
my classmate all the information she needed. And once my classmate
established that she was higher up in the chain than my wife, she
turned away satisfied.
There's
something sad about needing to judge your own achievements in relation
to other people's, so I pulled myself together, hugged my wife and
went back to writing this.
I'll
choose six hundred words over a suit and ton of steel any day.
Site
designed and maintained by Gautam Raja.
© Gautam Raja, unless stated otherwise.
|