Money Matters

Money Matters

6 mins
716


Amisha has been chasing something for almost two decades yet she has not yet figured out what it is! She started sweating to earn for her family at the age of fifteen. She took up a job of teaching kindergarten after her school time to earn a little money to help her mom. Amisha is always wobbling between her real world and her fantasy world. More than her tongue articulates, her mind keeps weaving stories such as what-ifs and fairy tales. But, in reality, she is completely engaged in one or other physically exhausting jobs.


As her mom owned a tailoring shop, Amisha needed to learn cooking when she was in the sixth standard. She also delivered stitched clothes to the respective customer's home if her mom missed the deadlines. She was a milk maid for 3 years. She used to wake up at four and hit home back by seven in the morning. She has been paying rents, electricity, water, medical, and network bills for almost two decades. She has been handling family budgets month on month. One dramatic, out of the course, medical emergency or relatives' wedding or religious rituals easily makes a financial dent that takes years to fix it. Yet, she manages everything without even complaining. There came a point she lost hope in any religion or ritual or relatives. Life teaches her that unless she sweats nor a penny will be given free. Neither a ritual nor a relative transformed her life miraculously.


Yet, Amisha never gives up on dreaming in spite of her dreary days of chasing money. Money decides her education, friends, and the time she spends on and with. She has very limited and handful of friends. Though she talks to everyone with true care and genuine interest, she carries very few people with her beyond the proximity of time and space. She believes that only humility and honesty can keep her safe and sane. Thus, whatever be the situation, she never lies or tries to manipulate things for her favor. Indeed, the experience taught her so many tactics but she chooses to be humble and honest to herself and others.


Amisha's career choices are also decided by the money and not by her passion sadly. Though teaching is her natural attribute, she couldn’t become a teacher, as she prioritised family’s needs. In a country like India, dreams are way too expensive to afford for a layman. She took a wrong turn to the chaos of the corporate world and has not achieved anything greater even there. She could have achieved something better in the corporate if she had not fallen prey for her emotional instinct of falling in love. She lost her half-a-decade earnings and savings foolishly for a fantasy fairy tale she dreamed of. Then again, she started from scratch to build her up. She did build her up and closed loans. Sorted out many things. Yet, she couldn't save anything for the rainy days.


But, while chasing money, she pushed away all her dreams and joy to the rearview. She loves reading classic literature books. She loves owning a mini library of her favorite books. Truly, she holds certain things so close to her heart and so at least she spends a few minutes a day to touch her collections of books and flip through a few pages. People are people they keep complaining about one or another thing, they need more from everyone and everything. Sometimes, she feels that at least her mom accepts her for who she is. It is kind of a revelation to her that after a point, her parents can't relate to so many things she does and they thrust their failures into her, though her parents brought her up with different levels of sense and sensibilities. If someone asks her what do you want, she never had a solid answer. Because, all she has been working and earning for her parents, indeed, she takes care of her needs without asking for their help. But, she puts them first before her and so all she wants is for her loved ones, she doesn't have a defined or a rationale answer what she actually needs.


But, truly she wants no big money or a house or a car or even a family, she wants to be a light in many lives either being a teacher or a motivator to help them to chase their dreams and believe in humanity. If not for her parents' futile vanity among their community or society or relatives, she would have run away from everything and would have become a volunteer to help humanity. She is repeatedly betrayed by the people whom she confided or loved selflessly. In fact, her own parents rely on her for their comfort and keep complaining that she is not efficient enough to run the family or make a family of her own. She tried her best to prove but in the end, nothing matters, unless one achieves socially approved standards of life. Even after so many falls, she is not able to convince herself to act against her instinct and emotions. That's her biggest failure, if she would have manipulated a few influential people's friendship for her growth. She would have been in a much better standards of her society. But, what she learned all along never allowed her to use people's time or trust for her own profit. Often, she wonders whether all this suffering is worth to reach the inevitable goal called death. She knows very well - it is not! Sometimes, she wants freedom from her heavy meat suit. She longs for the time that she no more is responsible for anyone's financial needs.


Amisha's mom and dad are the biggest critics of her life and they keep saying that she is a big failure. She is too tired of people who expect more and more out of her rather than helping her to do what she loves. In fact, after a point, she lost interest in anything and everything except middle-earth of Tolkien and Disney's animated characters. Because Middle-earth seems more real and Disney Characters seem authentic and permanent. She hates staying with the people who find fault with her.


She is very much aware of her reality and her failures. She needs no one to make realize what went wrong or why things went wrong. She messed up with so many things blindly but she can't give up on things that she believes in. Beyond her meaningless day-to-day routine to solve the financial need of her family, she finds meaning in little things she spends money on that gives her immense joy and purpose to wake up every day from the bed. End of the day, what she is made of doesn't matter to the world - how much money she is worth only matters to the world!


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