Krishna Shastri Devulapalli | On spectacle, time and the speed of money

“What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty and above all it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity.” — William S. Burroughs

The recent wedding celebration in our great land a week ago, a spectacle so blinding, and so maniacally covered by the media that it could have been avoided only by those on life support, made me think of three things. Money, free time and celebration. So bear with me and read these seemingly disconnected ruminations on the subjects and, who knows, they just might add up to the same number as they did in my head.

How money travels

Money travels differently from different destinations. From the hands of the poor, for instance, money travels at dizzying speeds. It zips in and out in a blur, barely making a stop. On salary/wage day, the poor man is like a spectator at a Formula 1 event. He watches his money vroom by from left to right, risking a neck sprain, like it is being driven by Max Verstappen.

The velocity of money changes, and the stops become progressively longer as it moves ‘up’ — and it always does — into the hands of someone richer than the previous holder.

The higher up money goes, the more languid its pace becomes. In its inevitable upward journey, money begins ageing, losing its vigour, and like an arthritic using the stairs, it begins taking longer and longer breaks with each flight, to catch its breath and give its rickety knees some respite.

It finally comes to a dead standstill on the top floor: the hands of the richest. Then it just sits there, immovable, unmoved, doing nothing. Except waiting for the next batch of tired money to come and join it so they can exchange stories and rot away in an ever-growing pile.

The Cost of Time

Have you noticed something about the rich man? He doesn’t know how to spend what is available free to everyone — time — freely. If you take out the time he is feverishly using up to make money, a rich man doesn’t know how to spend his leftover time without spending money.

Every free minute a rich man has, ironically, is a minute he pays for through his nose — by going on a vacation, buying a new car, throwing a party, redecorating his home, getting a tummy tuck, going on a second vacation directly from his first one in his new car to show off his tummy tuck at a party in his redecorated second home on the beach...

The rich man, poor fellow, doesn’t know how to take it as his right. It is free, my friend. You don’t have to pay for it. That’s why it’s called free time.

That time could be spent without spending a rupee, on the sofa he is currently sitting on (desperately trying to figure out what to do with the next terrifying minute that’s hurtling towards him like a blazing meteor), by just continuing to sit on it, and looking at a tree, reading a book, listening to a song, doing nothing, being, living — heaven forbid, thinking even — is unfathomable to him.

They say time is money. Apparently it is. In more ways than one.

At what cost celebration?

I don’t like celebration. Probably because I’ve always found celebration to be the opposite of intimacy. To me, ‘celebrating’ a wedding, a milestone birthday or anniversary has felt like the easy way out, something removed and alienating even. For what is intimate about paying tribute ticking off products and services — and people — on a catalogue, paying for them, and indulging yourself with a bunch of folk you pretend closeness to for an hour or so to feel good about yourself for an entire day before the sugar-high goes the way of all highs?

Not too long ago, breathless celebration didn’t seem to be the birthright of the average guy. For most, it came once a year. And was commemorated with the distribution of Nutrine orange muttai (one per head, mind you) to the entire class.

Today, celebration seems to have become as mandatory as an Aadhaar Card, age, gender, social status or occasion notwithstanding. Birthdays, bon voyages, anniversaries, switching off of life-support, it doesn’t matter. Everyone around me, young, old or comatose, seems to be celebrating something, anything, nothing. Non-stop. I guess it isn’t surprising, coming as we do from a land that has turned even massacre memorials into amusement parks.

Some time ago, a family I know ‘celebrated’ a milestone birthday of a parent like a roid-fuelled tag team, in a loop, with such indefatigability that, by the time they were done, the parent died. Making it time for them to write a never-ending cycle of eulogies.

Forget the lipstick index, the men’s underwear index, and the hemline index; all you need to do is look at the celebration index to know how badly a country is doing.