Dreams and Despairs

Every time I walk around my new house I can’t but help thinking, wow this is a big house and wow, its mine with my money that I have earned over these years. How did this happen?

When I openly talk about my own astonishment, my friends tell me – Jaimit you are a big man, you deserve this. But I never saw myself as a big guy. I know I am pretty senior now in my company. I am part of a big team running the company. A far cry from the 25 year old kid who joined the company and was thrilled to get the designation Associate Vice President on card. So thrilled that I remember flashing it around at the college reunion. Like most other thrilling cute things. As time goes by, the novelty wears off and you move on.

In my case it also helps that I am married to Jasmine who is nonchalance personified. Ok, you are the super senior guy in office and all that jazz, and you are stuck in meetings that could potentially make a few crores for the firm in a few years, but till then, can you please get a printout and before you come home – get some bananas and get up a few minutes early and go down and get some milk. 2 litres – Gokul special. Gokul special? Doesn’t he deliver – its three bucks a liter for delivery charges.

There, I am grounded. I think even I become some big CEO of some big company, I still will have to get the milk home. Two liters, Gokul special. Cause she has to make paneer and set the curd for the weekend. Sure. That’s why I am always amazed how did this delivery boy get this big house? Just how?

But I am not complaining. When this house was being made, it was completely different from what I was imagining it to be. It was shaping up nicely and like a rich man’s house, and that was causing me great pain. I did not want a rich man’s house. My image of myself is a simple guy with simple tastes and simple wants. Not this awesome rich freak with wall papered hall. Call me old fashioned but I grew up on a healthy dose of Amitabh Bachhan movies where a rich guy in a big house is always the villain. I identify myself as the one single guy who against the system, always angry, trying to work hard and make a decent living. In the middle of all this – I got myself a house.

In fact in the middle of the process of making the house, I was having a real heart to heart conversation with Jasmine. I was telling her that I don’t like the way my house is shaping up. It is looking too rich. I don’t identify with this and she had to calm me down and say its ok. I think she saw the foolish of my self-image and had to endure my stupidity and my ill directed ire. Slowly but surely I started seeing how nice it was and how well designed it had become. It really was spacious and well done up. And tastefully so. And everyday when I reach home or when I wake up in the morning and walk to the dining room, I ask myself, how did this happen?

As a young 20 year old, I was pretty much insecure about my future, my life and my career. I don’t know what I did and how I got here. For me it was always a question of how could one survive. I dreamt of a simple one room where I could get to sleep and wake up and have less possessions. India was not awesome nor did it have enough opportunities when I was in college. It slowly opened up and allowed people to blossom and make the most of it.  This is the power of free enterprise and dreams. This alone can pull millions of people out from poverty and allow them a chance to lead a prosperous life.

When I was growing up, one day cricket was just a start and people were just about trying to follow it. The world cup had started and it was dominated by the West Indian team. It was only around ten years back I found out that the west indies is not a country but a loose bunch of countries tied together by a cricketing board that tries to pick the best team.  By the time I was growing up, in 1983, India won the world cup and the frenzy around cricket just started.

The world cup was being held in London every time as only UK had the money to host the world cup and they insisted that the commercials lead the sport. India ten with the help of Reliance Industries brought the world cup to India in 87 and showed that when it comes to money power and organizing skills, we were getting there. Then liberalization started and when a billion liberalized people want some thing, it happens. We could put the most amount of money on the table and then the richer countries started crying and asked for the WC to be allotted on a rotational basis.

Today India holds the biggest private jamboree on cricket every year in the form of the IPL and cricketers from around the world come to be a part of this melee. It’s a huge thing and an interesting victory of the triumph of private enterprise. So many cricketers now may have been consigned to obscurity now have a chance to make a decent living. Ditto with the kabaddi league in the country. Just five years ago these players were living a simple Spartan life till the league happened and changed their lives.

In some ways I look to identify with this phenomenon. A life time spent on have nots and insecurity moving to a life of abundance and an attitude of we will figure. It’s pretty dramatic a shift as far as mental shifts are concerned. But at least I am thankful about it. It’s improved my life and allowed me to live my dreams in the best way possible. I fought my way here and it allowed me to reach what I thought impossible. Whatever works… works.

As an aisde, I cannot understand how kids these days (kids meaning everyone younger than me) look at a hookah joint and want to plan to go there and smoke away. I cannot understand it. I was having a conversation with my daughter on this and wondering how this works as well. Some kids in her school, drink and smoke. Oh dear dear me. They are not even 18. Hookah joints are the start point as they look innocuous enough and harmless enough. Like beer and breezers, simple innocuous starting points. As Jispa told me – they are gateway drugs. Simple enough to pull you in and then envelop you completely. I cannot endorse it no matter how hard I try to accept it. But hell, you choose your life and you choose what comes with it. What can I say? These are the side effects and perils of free enterprise. The ingenuity of man works both ways. I don’t know if I have blogged about this, but the fact that alcohol figures prominently or subtly in almost every Hollywood and Bollywood movie, there is a consipracy theory I have behind this. I think it’s all funded by the liquor lobby to make it look cool. Even the Avengers movies shows Tony Stark (Ironman) getting himself a peg and enjoying his drink. Every Indian movie has a song sequence at a party / club after getting yourself a few shots.

It is wrong and this is subtle targeting. The ability to imprint the coolness in people’s heads. It will cost us a lot. Hookah will cost us a lot. In ways that are not direct and un-understandable. We will learn and we will see. After all the choice is ours. We choose. We decide. But hope we have the wisdom to choose wisely.