Welcome back! Last few months were hectic as I am scaling up to the next big thing though it involves a web of uncertainties. Drawing inspiration from the Jamaican proverb - To eat an egg, you must break the shell, I am now in the process of getting out of the safe shell I was in and learning to sail. Time knows whether it is going to be a hit or a flop. But I am positive.
Lets talk Business.
The once much maligned caste system, complex and inscrutable as it may appear to us, once had deep roots in our society. The Brahmins pursued knowledge and statecraft. Kshatriyas fought and protected our honour and sense of nationhood. Banias ran business and trade. The sub castes (which ran into many hundreds) played their own roles. It all worked perfectly well till the lower castes, who got the rough end of the deal, began to protest. They refused to do the jobs assigned to them by history (many of which were demeaning) and sought a new status in the emerging India. This was but natural and ended up largely dismantling the edifice of caste. Merit became the new yardstick.
But the triumph of merit created its own problems. We see fewer people today doing what their forefathers did so amazingly well. Many have migrated to new jobs, without the skills required to back them. Others have become what can be best described as caste refugees. And, funnily, everyone wants to do the Bania’s job. So, however skilled they may be at what they do, most people now want to be in business, make lots of money. So from a great nation of many castes, many skills we are slowly becoming, like the US, a country where everyone, from teachers to healers to rock stars believe that God sent them to this planet with the sole mission of making money. The scramble for lucre has become so obsessive, so obscene that the dignity of many professions has simply vanished.
Where have the great thinkers gone? The legendary healers? The great musicians, painters, philosophers, teachers, leaders of change? Everyone seems to have joined the Gold Rush today. Painters talk more about the price of their canvases than the magic of their craft. Authors discuss sales graphs more than what they write about. Doctors spend more time arguing over their fees than the treatment. Teachers don’t talk about acquiring knowledge. They talk about coaching classes to help you pass exams, find lucrative jobs. Even fortune tellers blindside you to love and tell you how you can make more money by wearing some silly gemstone.
Cricketers have long ceased to be sportsmen. They are like cattle, valued by how much they fetch at slave auctions. So you write off a Saurav or a Brian Lara simply because no one bid for them at the IPL. A politician’s power is assessed not by what he does for India but by how much he stashes away in Switzerland. This country has become just another bazaar where everything’s bought or sold, from spectrum to wakf property to pretty underage brides to seats in Parliament. Everyone’s a Bania today. Everyone’s trading. No one buys art to hang it on their walls. They stash it away in vaults. Over 50% of flats sold in Mumbai, possibly the world’s most expensive real estate, are bought by investors or by politicians and Government officers to park their ill gotten cash. This ensures that prices stay at a level where actual home makers can’t afford it.
Life is not transactional. Nor is friendship, love, marriage, jobs. All around me today I see this bustling marketplace where everyone’s transacting, I understand now why our forefathers created the caste system. For all its faults, it allowed our society to have currencies other than cash. There was knowledge, skill, wisdom. There was courage, honour, pride. There was art, craft, music, the mysterious science of healing. There were so many things that made life magical. Now there’s just one currency driving us: Money. We have become a nation of Banias. Or, as the Americans would proudly say, entrepreneurs.
But the triumph of merit created its own problems. We see fewer people today doing what their forefathers did so amazingly well. Many have migrated to new jobs, without the skills required to back them. Others have become what can be best described as caste refugees. And, funnily, everyone wants to do the Bania’s job. So, however skilled they may be at what they do, most people now want to be in business, make lots of money. So from a great nation of many castes, many skills we are slowly becoming, like the US, a country where everyone, from teachers to healers to rock stars believe that God sent them to this planet with the sole mission of making money. The scramble for lucre has become so obsessive, so obscene that the dignity of many professions has simply vanished.
Where have the great thinkers gone? The legendary healers? The great musicians, painters, philosophers, teachers, leaders of change? Everyone seems to have joined the Gold Rush today. Painters talk more about the price of their canvases than the magic of their craft. Authors discuss sales graphs more than what they write about. Doctors spend more time arguing over their fees than the treatment. Teachers don’t talk about acquiring knowledge. They talk about coaching classes to help you pass exams, find lucrative jobs. Even fortune tellers blindside you to love and tell you how you can make more money by wearing some silly gemstone.
Cricketers have long ceased to be sportsmen. They are like cattle, valued by how much they fetch at slave auctions. So you write off a Saurav or a Brian Lara simply because no one bid for them at the IPL. A politician’s power is assessed not by what he does for India but by how much he stashes away in Switzerland. This country has become just another bazaar where everything’s bought or sold, from spectrum to wakf property to pretty underage brides to seats in Parliament. Everyone’s a Bania today. Everyone’s trading. No one buys art to hang it on their walls. They stash it away in vaults. Over 50% of flats sold in Mumbai, possibly the world’s most expensive real estate, are bought by investors or by politicians and Government officers to park their ill gotten cash. This ensures that prices stay at a level where actual home makers can’t afford it.
Life is not transactional. Nor is friendship, love, marriage, jobs. All around me today I see this bustling marketplace where everyone’s transacting, I understand now why our forefathers created the caste system. For all its faults, it allowed our society to have currencies other than cash. There was knowledge, skill, wisdom. There was courage, honour, pride. There was art, craft, music, the mysterious science of healing. There were so many things that made life magical. Now there’s just one currency driving us: Money. We have become a nation of Banias. Or, as the Americans would proudly say, entrepreneurs.
I am getting into Business as well. But I will never join the Gold Rush.
Jd.
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