The Un-Importance of Money

One thing I remember about my childhood is that we didn’t need money to be happy.  Money and the things it could buy hardly ever entered our minds. My best memories were the years between age four and ten, from1961 to 1967.  Those six years stand out like a bright beacon in a childhood that I would say was otherwise quite dull in comparison.  I remember so many things from that period like it was yesterday.  Those were the years when we had the least money.

My father got a job teaching Russian at IIT Powai, Bombay and we moved into the campus to live in the lecturer’s flats there.  It was in the beginning years of IIT Bombay and there was a lot of construction, road building and landscaping going on all around us.  For one year I attended St. Xavier’s school at Bhandup, which was some distance away and we had to take the school bus.  Later, when a local school was started on campus, my younger brother and I went there.  After a year, the Central School system was introduced (some years later it was renamed Kendriya Vidyalaya).  The fees were negligible – something like Re.1 a month or less! 

We walked to school with our school bags in hand or on our shoulders, I leading my brother by the hand.  As we walked, we were joined by other children on the way and arrived at school talking and laughing in a large group, before dispersing to our classes.  In the evenings we played together on the roads in front of our houses, standing aside to let an occasional car pass by.  Often we got together and decided to visit someone living further away, or go exploring by the shore of Powai lake looking for snail shells, climb trees to pluck mangoes or flowers or wade in the ditches on the side of the roads to catch tadpoles (the ditches were clean – plastic bags were not known then, and people in our locality at least were educated and cultured and didn’t throw garbage on the roadside).  Or we pooled our meager pocket money together and hired a bicycle for 10 paise an hour and took turns learning to ride while the rest held on and ran behind.

My parents were of modest means.  I never knew of my mother’s struggles to manage the home and bring up two children (and a parrot, a cat and a non-resident dog) on a lecturer’s income.  All I knew was that life was good, every day had some surprises in store and we were happy and had lots of friends. My mother did all the housework and cooking herself.  I learnt early to make my bed, sweep the house, iron handkerchiefs and work in the garden.  And yes, we had to regularly clean out the hencoop in the corner of the garden and spread the muck we had collected on the compost heap. We had eight White Leghorns, which we grew from chicks.  Later they were joined by three White Rocks and then we acquired a brown hen that laid two brown eggs a day, but made up for it by the trouble she caused - that is another story. 

We’d chase the hens, grab and hug them and when they got into the basket to lay their eggs, we’d sit beside them with our hands underneath to catch the warm eggs as they dropped.  Then we’d run to our mother with the eggs and she’d make a hole in each and we’d sprinkle salt and pepper and suck it out, fresh as fresh could be!  Life was good and full of simple pleasures.

We had few toys.  I had a doll called Rosebud, given by a Russian friend of my dad’s. She had blonde curly hair and blue eyes which could open and shut.  Apart from Rosebud, I had a stuffed bear called Bhaloo.  As far as I can remember, these were my only toys for a long time.  My brother had a meccano set and later we got a monopoly set and a pack of cards and when friends came over we would all play with them.  Most of the time we were outdoors, playing with sticks and stones, seeds and flowers that we found around us.  Money hardly came into the picture at all.

Every school day my mother handed me one anna (6 paise) to spend as I liked. I usually bought ‘Extra Strong’ peppermints and shared with friends. Some weekends, we’d be handed Re.1 each and we’d get together with our friends and walk a kilometer or more to the IIT auditorium to watch the film that was showing that day. It didn’t matter what it was – sometimes it was a Hindi film, sometimes English, sometimes Russian. In those days films didn’t have violence, foul language or explicit scenes for our parents to worry about.

We didn’t have to be dropped, picked up or chaperoned everywhere. Our parents didn’t always know where we were, but they knew we were safe. We just asked permission to go out and play and then went wherever our fancy took us, as long as it was within the campus (which was hundreds of acres). No one had telephones as far as we knew – at least we didn’t. When it got dark, we all made our way home.

Sadly, we left IIT Powai when I was ten, because my father got a better job in New Delhi at the Centre of Russian Studies. Life changed for me completely. For many years, we didn’t stay in any one place for long, as his boss would ask us to move to a different place at whim, sometimes after just three months. I could never again make close friends in my neighborhood and those subsequent years of childhood were very lonely. I missed my old environment, my friends, my cat and my hens. Our parrot Mitthoo was also affected by the change and stopped talking. I realize only now how fortunate I had been, that not all children of my generation enjoyed growing up in an environment such as I had had during those precious years.

Today things are so different. Children have so many toys and possessions and continuously want more. There is no sense of contentment, and parents struggle to provide all the things their children want and need. Envy is commonplace and parents are bombarded with demands because so-and-so has this or ‘everyone’ has that (isn’t it amazing how three people in a group of ten becomes ‘everyone’?). Even parents are busy keeping up with the Joneses. They want the ‘best’ schools for their kids, send them to special classes to learn dance, music, tennis or swimming. In the hustle to provide the best and the latest, they fail to provide experiences that are truly valuable, that teach life skills and of which memories are made.

I wonder if it wouldn’t be time well spent and pay huge dividends later, if we sit down occasionally and spend some time thinking about interesting things to do for our children that do not cost money?  To teach them the simple pleasures of life, inculcate a love for the outdoors and group play.  To set aside our time-devouring TV sets, laptops, i-pads and cell phones to talk to them, play board games or go for a nature walk, fly kites or play Frisbee on the beach.  When we focus on money and the things it can buy and when our happiness begins to depend on such things alone, isn’t something seriously wrong?  Do we really need that fancy house that needs a bevy of servants to look after?  And which takes the rest of our lives to maintain our ‘standard of living’ as well as to pay for in EMIs?  Or that fancy car that guzzles fuel?  Or that expensive school for our kids? 

And to afford all this we take on a stressful job that keeps us out of our homes till late at night (that gives us blood pressure and ulcers and huge medical bills).  And then we come home and ‘de-stress’ in front of the TV or at our computers or i-pads, shutting out our family members and especially our children, leaving them to their own devices.  And since we are draining our resources on a continuous basis, we fail to provide sensibly for our future.  Perhaps we need to take time every now and then to take a long, hard look at our lives and check to see if things are going the way they should be, that we are adding value to our lives in the areas that truly matter.