Everytime i visit Delhi or my hometown Chandigarh, i can't help but be amazed at the rapid pace with which their infrastructure and landscape is changing, for the better of course. While Delhi's Metro and the numerous flyovers have reduced traffic congestion to a fraction of what it was 5 years back, even Chandigarh and it's satellite towns of Mohali and Panchkula are evolving rapidly and emerging as the new IT hubs of the North, what with many major MNC's already developing their facilities there.
But what i want to talk about right now is an incredible story i heard from a friend on a recent trip to Chandigarh. Now recently there was news of an international airport coming up on the outskirts of Mohali, which made the villagers who owned land there go delirious as if they'd struck gold, and rightly so, since soon after the Government announced a proposal to buy land at a staggering Rs. 1 crore per acre!
Now rumour has it that one fine morning, the salesman at a leading luxury car showroom had a rather uncommon visitor. It was a farmer dressed in his usual rags, who demanded to be shown all their best models. The salesman obviously thought that the poor man was in the wrong place, and told him to go to the nearby economy car showroom, as this one was only for the luxury segment. When the farmer insisted, however, he grudgingly showed him around. But it was when the farmer zeroed in on the top most model, that the salesman laughed and told him it cost Rs. 70 Lakhs. Unfazed, the farmer persisted with his choice and told him he wanted an immediate delivery. Apparently he had been one of the beneficiaries of the land deal ! Now he was ushered to the branch manager's posh office, who explained to him that it would take a few days to get the paperwork done and even to encash the cheque for that large an amount. The farmer replied that they could keep all the papers and he was'nt paying by cheque, they could just send someone outside to bring the sack from his bicycle and could count the money from it!
So ultimately the 70 Lakh car was driven to his home by a driver who came back 12,000 bucks richer, while the farmer who didn't know how to drive peddled back modestly on his bicycle.
Though the narrator of this story had a "Fool and his money soon part ways" kind of contempt in his tone, i couldn't help but feel a strong sense of admiration for the farmer. I mean how many of us would dare to do something like this(even IF we had that kind of moolah). The famous middle class morality teaches us to save as much as possible, or invest all our profits back to gain more profits later, which ultimately becomes a vicious circle fuelled partly by greed and partly by an exaggerated concern for our future, such that we end up denying ourselves the well deserved pleasures of an occasional induldgence, labelling it as a moral sin.
However, having learnt my lesson from this story, i went and bought myself a pair of RayBan's I had been eyeing for sometime, and have decided to get a full body massage from an upmarket salon at least once a month.
So I guess the moral of the story for everyone is, stop worrying too much about the future, it wouldn't change it anyways, and rather spice up your present.
Or as Saif Ali Khan says in that commercial, "It's Your Life, Make it Large!"
:-)
