I’m realizing that village life, in a lot of cases, mocks city life. Take the example of building a house. Someone in a village is capable of building a house for one or two people with zero expense, yes ZERO expense. Two of our fellow Sreejan Kartas are doing it. Here’s how. They select a reasonably flat ground (approx. 150-200 sqft), cover it with mud, such that if beaten, it forms a 6-8 inch layer, get a few thick tree trunks from the forest, make a full structure out of the wood, cover the roof with twigs, make walls with the same twigs and then plaster it with mud from inside and outside, plaster the floor and walls from inside with cow dung and mud. No mason, help each other for manual labour and there you are. One might say that this is not zero expense, because they get wood from the forest, but the fact is that even if it is not technically zero, shelter is done at almost no cost.
Now, this is one extreme. If someone like me wants to build a house, I’ll not settle for something as basic, but how much should I spend on building a house for 4 of us to be able to sleep comfortably, cook and manage our bath & toilet within? Mind you, a living room is redundant in a village. There is a large open living space. Even if I spend 50k, it is considered quite high. Now compare that with a city dwelling. I get a feeling that in cities, we’ve magnified so many issues beyond proportion and so much that they acquire the size of a dream. Then we toil ourselves to fulfill the dream and hope to fulfill it in 5 years, sometimes 10 years.
The only saving grace is that the villager respects the ‘educated’ tag with the city folk and considers himself inferior. The city folk capitalize on his inferiority complex and keep fueling it so much so that the poor villager starts to aspire to be an urbanite. The day our poor villager applies his common sense and tears apart what this ‘educated’ tag actually is from inside, …whatever may happen, I will be very happy.
Ironically, when I started my career and we used to talk to clients about financial planning, such were the dreams for which we used spend hours planning, calculating, understanding complex investment products and what not. Now, it almost seems like a game. Win or loss does not matter in the real sense.
I’m slowly getting convinced that most of our expenses occur because of only one reason – because we have money. If we didn’t have the money, we still would have met our needs (not wants) and chances are that life would have been full of enthusiasm, thrill and more love.
I had a fun experience today. We generally fill drinking water from a stream nearby. The water there has become muddy because there’s a well being built nearby. So I insisted that we get clearer water from a well. Hariom and I went there only to find out that we’ll have to go near water to fill it. There was no rope or pully. I was trying to reach the water with the can and since the ground wasn’t as firm, I slipped into the well! Ooooh! What fun it is to float in a well. Hariom also fell inside, when he tried to fill. Finally we did fill water for drinking (4 cans of 20 litres) and after we were done, jumped in the well for one last round of the experience. Fun! The only thing I forgot before I slipped was that my mobile was in my pocket! I’m drying it…and hope that it works tomorrow, but it didn’t take away from the fun at all!
After this experience, it is fun to even drink the water…its not just water now, it’s the water.
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