I have a small bowl kept on my TV
table, which is always filled with Rs. 1 and Rs. 2 coins. Neither
collecting coins is my hobby nor they are my savings. But still they
have their own value. Afterall, growing up in a typical middles class
family, where you dont have a concept called pocket money, makes your
early life very interesting and teach about value of money in various
ways.
When I think about value, specifically
value of money, I remember my childhood. 15-18 yrs ago, Rs. 1 and Rs
2. could buy many things for me that would give me happiness. I
remember my maternal grandmas place where we could rent a cycle for
an hour in Rs. 1. We used to share it with our cousins, take rides
turn by turn. In fact I learned cycle with that Rs. 1. That one hour
used to be celebrations for us. We used to buy ber (jujube) candy and
powder, 4 orange candies, and 2 ponga pandits (i hope you remember
this :) ) in Rs. 1. And it used to be so tasty that we wanted to have
it every day, infact every hour. But like I mentioned earlier that
there was no concept of pocket money for us, we have to have lot of
patience to enjoy all this.
We used to buy a small toy in Rs. 1.
That toy used to be a small truck. Guess what?? We would also have
options with various colours and types of trucks to buy. Having such
options in Rs. 1?? WOW!! We used to tie a thread to the toy and then
roll it over the flower. We used to fill it with mud and transport it
from one place to another. We used to this whole day. Normally, life
of this toy used to be not more than an hour. But we used to make
sure it was intact atleast for 2 days. Usually tiny little plastic
wheels used to be common malfunctioning parts. But we used to have
maintainance and repairing experts with us in those days. That was
all fun in Rs. 1.
A somosa, in our school canteen, used
to cost Rs. 4. I still remember those school days, when 8-9 friends
used to contribute 50 paise or Rs. 1 and share 2 samosas. We used to
make sure that no one is deprived of a byte of that tasty samosa. A
vendor outside our school used to sell boiled ber (jujube) and
flavoured ice candy for Rs. 2. Such tasty items were never daily
stuffs for us. But having them in a week would give us trmendous
satisfaction, which used to last at least for a week.
Do you remember a bubble gum named “Big
fun”? Yes. Chewing that for at least 10 mins. used to be really
fun. But the bigger fun was collecting a sticker inside the wrapper
of this bubble gum. This sticker would have crickters name printed
with runs/wickets scored. If one had all stickers with them that
could count 100 runs or 10 wickets in total, then he used to be
eligible for a small gift. I don't remember any of my friends
receiving a gift but there used to be heavy competitions amongst us
to collect as many runs as possible. I used to be overjoyed if I had
6 or 4 runs scored and disappointed when 0 runs or OUT scored. We
actually bought emotions in Rs. 1 and had fun with them. And the time
came where Big fun brand itself had tough competition with Big
Bubble. Brand changed, competition changed. This haaped to us as
well. Now we had competitions of,
I-can-make-big-bubble-by-chewing-gum instead of
I-scored-maximum-runs-from-chewing-gum. Big fun was out of the market
in an year. I damm care about how much businness such companies had
done selling a bubble gum. All I care about how much I enjoyed Rs. 1.
The biggest part of happiess were
Kites. Variety of Kites in Rs. 1 were the most tempting part of fun
those days. Although making them to fly in sky would cost around Rs.
50, but that was like one time investment. Mostly we used to share or
borrow other accessories from freinds. Some of them were hand made by
us, specially a thread that connects the kite to a roll, called
“Manja”.
That was also the era of marbles.
Buying marbles for Rs. 1 and practicing the art of winning them used
to give us fame those days. There used to be very few who were
experts playing marbles and have huge collections marbles. Those guys
were most respected, achieved red carpet status, and supposed to be
richest person ever born on this earth, when it came to marbles.
And now we are leaving in a completely
different era. Now, the candies and chocloates, which were the parts
of happiness and satisfactions few years before, are now exchanged as
a part of change. Today, for us, the value of Rs. 1 is just the part
of the change. Sometimes we do not even bother to take the Rs.1
change from the shopkeeper. Neither the shopkeeper is willing to give
one even if he has one. Today, we try to find Rs. 1 in news papers
and news channels. We are eager to know the price of Rs. 1 vs $1.
But, it hardly gives us satisfaction or happiness. And most
importantly, you would hardly find any thing in Rs. 100 that would
gives you happiness and satisfaction.
We all understand that there is lot of
economics and mathematics behind this Rs. 1 and Rs. 2. They are
vanishing or at least becomming rare. Rs. 10 and 100 are now todays
Rs.1 and 2. Today, we buy luxourious cars and home with lakhs of
rupees. But the point here is “Happinness” hiding behind small
things. Today, when we own our hard earned money, we are more concern
of paying EMI's. Does this really give us the happiness and
satisfactions that we used to have years before? OR is it that, now
we find happiness in things which cost much more? Today, I have a
bowl full of Rs. 1 coin and salary account with some thousands of
ruppees. And I believe everyone of us would have the same. But, do we
really have the amount of happiness and satisfaction that we used to
have years before?
Our country has seen lot of variations
in economy these years. So did happened to the value of Rs. 1. But,
did the value of happiness also varied drastically? I wonder if the
value of happiness has increased.
