Yet Untitled 096 - Impressions of Money
(Dosh/cash/greenback/change/rokda/cha-ching/moolah) and Me
Dearest Yet Untitler
I hope you are well.
Today I’m going to write about something I rarely write about.
In attempting to do so, I realize that I lean towards thinking about money as a means - in terms of things it can afford me - not as a thing. The closest I’ve come to thinking about money as a ‘thing’ is thinking about it as notes/coins; like how first-world notes are plastic, how Indian currency of the 90s was usually grubby and dirty, and how British one-pound coins have a delicious heft and how - for a time - Indian 5 rupee coins, of similar heft, used to work in coin-op machines in London.
I have some barriers when it comes to thinking about money as a concept. I suspect that these barriers are similar to the ones I’ve encountered when it comes to mathematics and chess. I revisited an old instalment on this subject and found that like math, card games and chess - all paradigms that, to me, entail strategic thinking - money also presents me with a similar challenge.
However, I cannot avoid it. Life has led me to a place where strategic thinking is imperative. My first action has been to engage freely with this concept that admittedly puzzles me - first in my head and then practically too. For me, this is a precarious walk, but - as it is always with taking walks in new places - you end up seeing and feeling all manner of new and interesting things.
This instalment is by no means a treatise on money and how to think about it. It’s just me cataloguing what all rises up in my head as I engage afresh with the concept of money, resolved to overcome my trepidation around it. This involves indexing through a bouquet of memories, ideas and artefacts that are thrown up as I plow through. I thought I’d share some of these here with you.
“What use is money if it can’t buy you a little bit of comfort?”
A film director I worked with once said this to me in my early 20s and I must say that for a long time this sentence became - for better or for worse - my compass when it came to money. For a long time, it allowed me to take some clear decisions around how I spend money. While I don’t think this necessarily led me to more healthy habits around money, I do appreciate what it taught me: that in the end one of the uses of money, apart from buying things, is to buy steadiness, balance and conditions to thrive in - which, I feel, are all worthy transactions.
Money Music
After Love, perhaps it’s Money that’s popular music’s next-favourite subject. Thinking about all the music that comes up in my mind when thinking about money, I found that - as with Love - popular music addresses Money’s banal aspects spectacularly. Here are some songs that do this well. All danceable songs!
“Your love gives me such a THRILL, but your love won’t pay my BILLs, I want MONEY…that’s what I WANT!”
- one of money’s banalities, from ‘Money’ by The Flying Lizards
Of course, there’s a whole catalogue of songs that offer more nuance about money. Both songs I’ve mentioned below invite me to think beyond money’s banalities.
I did find, however, that while popular music is able to touch upon Love’s profundities, I could not think of any song that revealed dealt with money in a profound way. I found nuance for sure, but not profundity. This suggests to me that perhaps money isn’t one of the fundamentals of life as Love is, such stuff that one is able to unearth profundity from. In this respect, I find it interesting that Annie Lennox below talks about money in terms of a negation (as did the Beetles) - “money can’t buy it/can’t buy me love…”
A story I remember about money
My Hindi teacher at school, Mr Navendra Pratap Painuli, told me this story that I haven’t forgotten - once when he was a boy, his father gave him one shiny new coin to go buy some provisions with. In those days, a single rupee was subdivided into 16 annas, and each anna had various further subdivisions. Today, even while the rupee has 100 paise that it’s made up of, we all know how little those are worth.
However, little Mr Painuli went to a provision shop, purchased some lentils, paid with that one coin and was given a handful of shiny new coins in return. He recounted the immense pleasure he felt by suddenly having so many coins in his pocket, even after having spent money via that singular piece of currency he had gone with. It must have felt like magic - he must have been fascinated by the concept of commerce from that day on.
I think what I take from Mr Painuli’s story is that money can give us a sense of plenty and this is something we find reassuring as humans. I’m sure that life ultimately taught Mr Painuli that money had told him a bit of a lie that day, that it would more often than not convey to him a sense of slipperiness and scarcity than this wonderful abundant feeling that he experienced that day.
This idea of ‘plenty’ being a good thing reminds me of something I remember my grandfather saying:
“No matter how poor you become, make sure there’s always good food on your table”
- my grandpa, Mr. Rajeshwar Nath
This is a sentence said by a man who had likely seen success and failure a few cycles in quick succession. I’d take my grandfather’s statement not at face value but as his formula for weathering his fluctuating fortunes. He weathered them by simulating a sense of plenty even when the chips were down - not via money itself but via food - another consumable.
From the idea of ‘consumability’, I’m prompted to think about modern cycles of consumption, which all seems to function on the presumption that money is the only constant while everything else is mutable.
I grew up in a household where the washing machines and TVs in use at home were often the same age or older than I was. Back then, the predominant impression about the little things that made up our everyday - the clothes, the cars, the homes - was that they were reliable and built to last. Perhaps, those days, you didn’t have to think about money as much in those days because shit usually worked. Today I seem to exist in a scenario that presumes things will not work - at every level. I’m conditioned to presume that the phone I buy today will likely be replaced in 2-3 years unless I consciously decide not to replace it. Hell, I admit to thinking about whether coastal Mumbai will be liveable for us in a decade if oceans keep rising.
Perhaps none of this is new. Perhaps every generation struggled with its own uncertainties and hoarded money/food/resources against them. However, my impression of history suggests that the modern world has placed its bets on money over and above all else. Not nature. Not people. Not countries.
I find this precarious. It’s one of my discomforts with money. My instincts tell me we’re betting on the wrong thing. Buddhism offers the counterpoint regarding life as the only thing worth investing in - i.e. putting life over and above all else.
The offering of a mud pie
This Buddhist parable feels apt to end this rumination with.
A young boy called Virtue Victorious was present when the Buddha came begging for alms. The boy had nothing to give, so he gave the Buddha a mud pie. The Buddha happily accepted the mud pie, knowing the boy’s sincere heart and blessed him. In a later age, the boy Virtue Victorious was born as the great king Ashoka.
From this story, I conjecture - money is a mirror. How we use it depicts who we are. But, Virtue Victorious didn’t use money at all. The true transaction was the one that took place between two lives.
It’s always that, isn’t it? Even when we skip across to a provision store with one shiny coin in our pockets to buy lentils.
Thanks for listening!
V
PS. As always, I’d love to hear from you. What’s the one sentence you turn to when thinking about money. Please share in a comment.
Also - if you came here looking for serious, nuanced insight on money - sorry to disappoint; but you will find it here in my brother Uday Nath’s blog - The Magic Bull.
I'm thinking of the line in the Three Kinds of Treasure gosho which says that treasures of the heart are the most valuable of all.