The Great Wall of Money

I’m a poor man's poor man. That’s how broke I am. And going by the recent Zoroastrian ramifications in the city, I'm too poor to be a poor Parsi, either. It’s also one of the reasons I don’t have superrich friends. I’d love to call myself a poor writer as well but that would be farcical due to my commitments towards amphigory. But to your credit, there is no such thing called a poor man's Chetan Bhagat. He’s just another former rotund banker who is molesting his thin luck. To that measure, even in the world of literature, the ugly gap between rich and poor is not only widening but also dividening.

Ask yourself: Isn’t it a remarkable coincidence that almost all the famous writers come from an affluent background? And all these moneyed snobs carry the divine right to comment on our miserable underbelly?

Having trolled them, I can assure myself we are only as wretched as our hindsight. But that doesn’t make the world balanced. Everything depends on how we choose to look at things. In that sense, not all beggars are poor nor all poor, beggars. Giving is something and asking is something else. For example, the underprivilged ones keep dreaming of orchestrating a real revolution while the rich are quite content with trending topics on Twitter.

Anyway, there's something terribly wrong with a world where the rich insure their butt while the poor get theirs kicked. But in the middle lies the middle class (MC)—the poor who can afford to spend. And this class tends to believe that those battling poverty and geezerhood are having a lot of time on their hand (and finger) as they queue out there under the scorning sun just to cast their vote. To sum it up, their life is a lame political trick gone funny. 

Politics makes its presence felt when a grimy nation like India test-fires missiles and related phallic inanities hoping she wouldn’t be as poor as she already is. A similar trend is visible during those time of the year when budget is announced. The media automatically drifts towards MC. What the clowns in Parliament fail to understand is the fact that the poor don't need a budget. For that, all they've got to do is insert their hands into their pockets. They need clothes with pockets, in most cases, to be blunt.

Similarly, health is wealth when it comes to those who never heard anybody share the secret of an apple’s ability to scare away doctors. These lot die in huge numbers. Every single day. Without a sound. While doing so, they prove the rich man's disease a myth. After all, it’s just that the poor couldn’t afford to diagnose what they actually died from.

There’s nothing wrong with being poor. But if you aren’t rich, at least try to be happy. Also, those who are poor thanks to their rich principles are indeed rich.

Dependence on Independence

When a citizen says s/he is independent, what exactly are they trying to imply? That they are free to do anything of their wish? Or that they are no more under colonial cloud? Or just that they feel good about the way things are running around them?

Maybe, all of the above. Maybe, none.

Independence is just an idea. Like everything else, it too begins and ends with you. That’s a very simplistic way of looking at things and even foolhardy, in most cases. We discuss independence with only human society in general. We don’t consider the animals and the birds and reptiles and others who “live”. And that’s exactly where we lose the right to be pointy on matter of related to independence. You see, excluding humankind, every other living is predominantly independent because they can afford so. But human society had long lost the virtue of independence. Maybe we left it in the caves, in search of better living conditions.

My point is, we are NEVER independent; physically, emotionally or in any other sphere of relation. We can never be independent. The very fact that we are not on the list of endangered species yet (but are gladly putting others on it!) proves the reach of our interdependence.

I find it rather trivial that we celebrate “Independence Day”, not “Freedom Day” because if we look at it, the colonizers were dependent on the colonies, not the other way around. The colonies just wanted them to empty the room which didn’t belong to the colonizers in the first place.

Whatever.

Either you care about independence or you don't. Either way, it doesn't matter.

P.S. If you are reading this tripe, please forgive me for being naive. I sympathize with your loss of time. Honestly.