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I have been asked to write my column keeping in mind this week's theme of billionaires. Let me begin by saying that I personally don't know any billionaire and neither can I put myself easily in their shoes. So, forgive me if this column fails to live up to the mark. But there is one thing I think we all - billionaires included - may well do, in keeping with the current political environment in the capital, and that is to redefine the term "rich".
At one of the best-known private schools in Gurgaon recently, I saw a classroom where the students were doing a project on role models. While going through some of the charts on the wall, I was quite surprised to see hanging next to a photograph of Mahatma Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and Mother Teresa, a photograph of a beaming Dhirubhai Ambani.
I know he was one of India's most successful businessmen. He was, by far, one of the richest Indians in the world. I'm sure he gave jobs to thousands of Indians. Hundreds may have made their fortunes on the strength of his companies. But to equate him to Bhagat Singh struck me as a bit stretched. Do we want our children to worship money or only aspire to this? Has the fight for freedom given way to the quest for fortune?
Even as children grow, they receive the same messages. Headlines are often focused on how much money the Indian Institute of Management or Indian Institute of Technology graduates are extracting as salary packages. Newspapers and magazines (admittedly this one too) focus on who are the richest Indians on this or that day - often based on something as random as Sensex movements.
Then, we are vicariously interested in who earns how much. There are any number of articles on pay packages of CEOs, bankers and other professionals. Newspapers report with glee how much a cricketer or actor has earned through endorsements or a film.
When I travel on flights and happen to overhear any conversation, it's not uncommon for it to be focused on money. "Kinne lakh da (how many lakhs)?" is a common phrase that most of us would have heard. Prices of the latest models of cars, real estate, apartments are a favourite topic at parties, restaurants and even around the dining table. People take an almost perverse pleasure in listening to tales of someone's fortunes or misfortunes.
I live and work out of India's Millennium City. I am surrounded by hundreds of people who seem to be in an endless pursuit of wealth. But their lives don't necessarily seem to be getting any richer. How can they when they live within a radius of 15 square kilometres ? The furthest they go is to the golf course, the malls and the airport. Most have not stepped into a national stadium for at least 10 years, have never ridden the Metro and their children can't quite place India Gate.
But I have found richness of thought with the most ordinary people. Personal assistants and secretaries of bureaucrats at sundry ministries have, at times, said something that stays in my mind for days. A private secretary at the ministry of aviation I knew was almost always more knowledgeable than the person I was waiting to meet.
Bureaucrats have often surprised, impressed and angered me with both their deep understanding of India, their endless patience and sometimes their aura of resignation. I recently met a consultant at one of the large consultancy firms who surprised me by managing to bring some new insights into our discussion. He turned out to be a former Indian Administrative Services officer who took voluntary retirement.
I have a cook who comes in five times a week. I often have found that the conversations with him - where he tries to explain to me why producing a boy is essential in his village and the social consequences of not being able to do so - are far more enlightening than a banker or consultant who I meet at a party and who holds forth on the quality of business class service across airlines or the last seven-star resort his family holidayed at.
We, for our children's sake if not our own, urgently need to introspect and redefine rich. Poverty is in thought, not in what you do or don't possess. Similarly, rich is in action and thought, not in what you do or don't own.
