The rich have problems that you and I cannot even fathom. An acquaintance, an industrialist I’ve known for some while, took me around his home recently, sharing his living spaces with a great deal of pride. If it was my home, I’d have been equally thrilled to show it off — vast halls, many, many rooms, a good deal of mostly tasteful art. But here was the problem: right next to the industrialist’s bedroom was another meant for — no, not his children, but his bodyguard, who did duty 24x7.
“Isn’t it difficult having your bodyguard with you round the clock?” I asked. “He’s like family,” said my acquaintance defensively. “But to have him listening in to every conversation” — we were talking on the bodyguard’s toilet break — “to have him share every meal, every family secret…” I couldn’t think of many things that might be worse. “It’s true,” sighed the industrialist, “but what choice do I have when there’s a threat against all of us?” That “us” was not entirely inclusive; in fact, it was exclusive to a very limited group of the rich, and I certainly was not part of it.
Emboldened, and because the bodyguard was not yet back, my acquaintance of a few years said, “What I worry most about is sex.” “Er,” I said, hoping he was not going to gossip about things that might embarrass me then or him later. “What I mean,” he looked around furtively, “is what I should do for my bodyguard’s sex life. After all, if he’s with me 24 hours, seven days, should I find a partner for him, or…?”
Fortunately, I was saved from any more indiscreet revelations because the bodyguard came back then, but the issue stayed with me. Was the industrialist being thoughtful or merely idiotic? Was it even in his realm to dabble in his bodyguard’s personal life in the first place? Would any such intrusions be handled by him directly? Was it even in good taste?
That the rich think differently was brought home a few days later when another acquaintance, also extraordinarily wealthy, dropped by for a drink and an impromptu meal that — it astonished him — was perhaps as imaginatively cooked as might have been served by his own array of cooks. Since he could hardly ask me how much this newspaper pays me, he asked my wife the quantum of salaries hacks make, whether they live well, and whether they have alternate sources of income to tide them over. The questions might have been insensitive if they had not been naïve — did the middle class, in his isolated reckoning, live better than he thought they ought? I hoped he would not think to edit the salaries of his staff to cut them down to size.
For once though the shoe was on the other foot when I was asked to come to the international airport to be personally escorted around a private jet flown in by a company hoping to sell them to India’s burgeoning billionaires. My driver took me to the wrong gate, one clearly meant for cargo. We hailed a few personnel, to ask them whether they could guide us to the terminal where the private jets might be parked, but no one seemed to know, or cared.
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All but one person — a new recruit perhaps — who asked, “You mean the terminal where rich people with their own aircraft come?” “Yes,” I nodded, “that’s the one.” He looked up, “Do you own a plane?” It was easier to simply lie. “Yes,” I said, “yes, I own one.” His instant approval gained us swift directions.
In that instant, when I might have been rich, I confess that it felt quite good. I might even get used to the feeling.