Poor little rich men
Cheapness is not the preserve of the poor, as some may believe. In fact, it’s quite the other way round, most times. The richer you get, one can safely generalize, the tighter gets your fist (and other parts of your anatomy, might I add, since we’re all a year older in 2006 and can handle off-colour references that much better).
I’m not romanticizing poverty and being poor here, but the ease with which people in fairly straitened circumstances give, and the complex scheming that rich people use to avoid giving, is an amazing socio-psycho phenomenon. Even what he owes and is rightfully due to someone, the rich man (and woman, no gender differentiation here for sure) parts with usually with bad grace, and as late as he possibly can. It’s like pulling teeth, trying to get from these people. Not just money, but time, sympathy, a listening ear, a smile. It’s all dispensed carefully, grudgingly, and with great premeditation by most of the wealthy, sorry to say.
Sure they ‘do charity’. All the while looking pious and talking about The One Above and Our Less Fortunate Brothers. Oodles of well-recorded kind acts, in ostentatious charity events, in India and abroad, that show-case their austerity and self-denial and faiu-thousand year long tradition of philanthropy and whatnot. But get them to let go of a hundred rupees, or pay someone on time, or honour simple commitments to hard-working people, and oh man, no way. Rikshaw drivers let go of a rupee here and there. But not the well-heeled. Never. Especially if no one’s looking and it’s meant to be a just-like-that courtesy. Then you’ll find no one more hard-nosed than the rich.
The ones who’re in my experience the absolute worst, though there are plenty local examples too, are those who live abroad who send work to Indians here. I’m not talking about the biggy outsourcing and BPO operations. I’m talking about, say, a doctor dude sitting in San Jose or some such, who wants his community history in India researched and written. Or the businesswoman dudette swooping down from New Jersey wanting a local graphic designer to make her a beautiful booklet of shlokas as gifts to give back home in the US of A. Or the desh-bhakt who left his janma-bhoomi circa 1975, has done mighty well for himself in his yankee karma-bhoomi, and now wants to have his autobiography written. These are just examples (resemblance to persons dead or alive…etc, etc).
Follow their modus operandi closely: They do their research well, get someone to check out the credentials of the person whose services they’re engaging, ask for samples, CVs, references, and all of that stuff. Of course, they’re shopping for this service in India, because they’ve got convinced over the years that when we see dollars, we’ll forget the arithmetic we were taught in Std III, and simply see stars (and stripes) and go all gimme-gimme-gimme. So they start with quoting some laughable figure for your services. If you venture to say that’s too little, they are capable of saying in a wily voice: “Look, in rupees that’s a lot of money.” Yes uncle, I too know the exchange rate, you want to say. Then they get all huffy and puffy and say, or imply: “Look, just because I live in America, don’t think I’m rich and have money to throw around.” If you stick to your guns, they then change to the holier-than-thou number: “Look, I am doing this for a good cause, for the enhancement of my community/family values/Indian tradition/yada-yada-yada…and I'm spending for it from my own pocket.” (As if that’s some kind of clincher.)
If at this stage you tell them to go…well go fly a kite, they come back to you with a sigh of resignation, saying well ok, I’ll pay your fees. Now you’d think that is that, and everyone is now free to be professional and quit this ridiculous, insulting dance. But no. You ask for an advance, and there starts a new round of fist clenching. They want to ‘transfer funds’ (big name for sending even something like Rs 5000!) in such a way, that you wait for a cheque in the post (3 weeks), which then goes up and down across continents, gets credited to your account a month later, with a tidy sum of money sliced off by the banks involved. If you demonstrate that you too are aware, back here in India, of things like inter-bank money transfers, the man will whine at you in that unique Indo-American accent: “Oh but that will caast me twenny daalars.” At which point you feel so sick of talking money and hassling with this pathetically rich person, that you simply say: do what you like (and I wish you could add: but for god’s sake stop whining like a traffic signal beggar). You complete his work, wait for another month and three weeks for the remaining money, and warn all your colleagues and friends: when you quote to one of these monied types, factor in every little paisa and cent, and then some more for the sheer crassness of the interaction.
Cheapness is not the preserve of the poor, as some may believe. In fact, it’s quite the other way round, most times. The richer you get, one can safely generalize, the tighter gets your fist (and other parts of your anatomy, might I add, since we’re all a year older in 2006 and can handle off-colour references that much better).
I’m not romanticizing poverty and being poor here, but the ease with which people in fairly straitened circumstances give, and the complex scheming that rich people use to avoid giving, is an amazing socio-psycho phenomenon. Even what he owes and is rightfully due to someone, the rich man (and woman, no gender differentiation here for sure) parts with usually with bad grace, and as late as he possibly can. It’s like pulling teeth, trying to get from these people. Not just money, but time, sympathy, a listening ear, a smile. It’s all dispensed carefully, grudgingly, and with great premeditation by most of the wealthy, sorry to say.
Sure they ‘do charity’. All the while looking pious and talking about The One Above and Our Less Fortunate Brothers. Oodles of well-recorded kind acts, in ostentatious charity events, in India and abroad, that show-case their austerity and self-denial and faiu-thousand year long tradition of philanthropy and whatnot. But get them to let go of a hundred rupees, or pay someone on time, or honour simple commitments to hard-working people, and oh man, no way. Rikshaw drivers let go of a rupee here and there. But not the well-heeled. Never. Especially if no one’s looking and it’s meant to be a just-like-that courtesy. Then you’ll find no one more hard-nosed than the rich.
The ones who’re in my experience the absolute worst, though there are plenty local examples too, are those who live abroad who send work to Indians here. I’m not talking about the biggy outsourcing and BPO operations. I’m talking about, say, a doctor dude sitting in San Jose or some such, who wants his community history in India researched and written. Or the businesswoman dudette swooping down from New Jersey wanting a local graphic designer to make her a beautiful booklet of shlokas as gifts to give back home in the US of A. Or the desh-bhakt who left his janma-bhoomi circa 1975, has done mighty well for himself in his yankee karma-bhoomi, and now wants to have his autobiography written. These are just examples (resemblance to persons dead or alive…etc, etc).
Follow their modus operandi closely: They do their research well, get someone to check out the credentials of the person whose services they’re engaging, ask for samples, CVs, references, and all of that stuff. Of course, they’re shopping for this service in India, because they’ve got convinced over the years that when we see dollars, we’ll forget the arithmetic we were taught in Std III, and simply see stars (and stripes) and go all gimme-gimme-gimme. So they start with quoting some laughable figure for your services. If you venture to say that’s too little, they are capable of saying in a wily voice: “Look, in rupees that’s a lot of money.” Yes uncle, I too know the exchange rate, you want to say. Then they get all huffy and puffy and say, or imply: “Look, just because I live in America, don’t think I’m rich and have money to throw around.” If you stick to your guns, they then change to the holier-than-thou number: “Look, I am doing this for a good cause, for the enhancement of my community/family values/Indian tradition/yada-yada-yada…and I'm spending for it from my own pocket.” (As if that’s some kind of clincher.)
If at this stage you tell them to go…well go fly a kite, they come back to you with a sigh of resignation, saying well ok, I’ll pay your fees. Now you’d think that is that, and everyone is now free to be professional and quit this ridiculous, insulting dance. But no. You ask for an advance, and there starts a new round of fist clenching. They want to ‘transfer funds’ (big name for sending even something like Rs 5000!) in such a way, that you wait for a cheque in the post (3 weeks), which then goes up and down across continents, gets credited to your account a month later, with a tidy sum of money sliced off by the banks involved. If you demonstrate that you too are aware, back here in India, of things like inter-bank money transfers, the man will whine at you in that unique Indo-American accent: “Oh but that will caast me twenny daalars.” At which point you feel so sick of talking money and hassling with this pathetically rich person, that you simply say: do what you like (and I wish you could add: but for god’s sake stop whining like a traffic signal beggar). You complete his work, wait for another month and three weeks for the remaining money, and warn all your colleagues and friends: when you quote to one of these monied types, factor in every little paisa and cent, and then some more for the sheer crassness of the interaction.
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