A child's dream against reality

5th March 2018

Hey diary!

You remember I'd told you about the day when I'd saved my pocket money to a staggeringly humongous amount of a thousand rupees? Remember how I was ecstatic beyond any measure, jumping in the air with unparalleled sense of achievement. I had saved a thousand rupees after all!

It's one followed by three zeros, my first four-digit savings ever!

But I'd saved it so that dad would add twice the money I was putting in and buy me what I believed would help me in changing the history of mankind - the net knitted swing that I could setup in the backyard. My "secret place", where I could lie all day, beneath the shade of the huge Banyan tree, and read Khaled Hosseini, Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, Douglas Adams and everyone I wanna read.

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But, and there's always a but.

I would've lost my first thousand. All the sacrifices, the uneaten roadside food, by means of which my savings could cross that unreachable landmark, all the dreadful sins I had committed by refusing the call of hamburgers and pizzas, everything I'd done to somehow control myself from spending away even a rupee, would all disappear in an instant - in the snap of finger.

Suddenly my feelings for my "to-be-the-most-precious" possession had changed. I still longed for the swing, but that longing-need of mine now seemed like an extravagant desire. What all could I have accomplished with a thousand rupees? Come to think of it, I could buy maybe 20-25 second hand novels from Aminabad. In words of Adi, I could buy 200 samosas with that amount. Can you believe it? 200 is so huge, even Adi would take more than a month to finish that. ​

Even though I had to pay a third of the price, I somehow felt that the swing was not worth that much. I'd thought that, maybe I'll buy something later on, and that I could still do away with the bench in the backward. I'd buy only those things which would be worth the sacrifices I'd made. I'd realized one thing that day, most things we think we need, are just that, mere thoughts.

Well, today I've just brought "The ultimate hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" (which, by the way, is a trilogy in five books), "A tale of two cities", "The d'Artagnan Romances"(a trilogy, this one had three parts only) and "And the mountains echoed". It all cost me just two hundred rupees. I'll resell them in a hundred and fifty rupees when I'm done with reading them all.

And I opened a bank account with mom, where she's gonna give me 5% simple interest on the amount I keep with her. That would make a thousand rupees into a thousand and fifty by the end of an year!

Isn't that crazy! Fifty rupees for doing nothing! I love this thing.

I'll tell you about the books soon. See ya,

Dhruv

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7th May 2018

Guess what? Dad brought me the swing! He said it's my reward for weighing my financial decisions, and I just love the swing. Douglas Adams was right when he said that humans are so amazingly primitive a specie that they still believe digital watches to be a cool thing. I mean look at this swing, this is what a cool thing look likes...........

(To be continued)