Would I do that if I were paid so much more?

“Who smokes beedis these days!?” said my friend.
“Quite a lot of people that can’t afford cigarettes…” I replied automatically.

We were in a corner booth at a quaint, charming place called Koshy’s early this morning. This place is quite popular with the locals for its English breakfast, but I noticed how much the place looked like your typical eatery scene from the pages of an a British novel. It was quite early in the morning and we barely beat the church-crowd by just a few minutes to get a seat in this deli.

On this occasion, that strong beedi smell that intruded our senses came from a few night watchmen we just passed, catching up during their morning tea breaks. As we made a quick arithmetic, we realized that those watchmen must be making no more than 4000 bucks a month and probably had quite a large family to fend for. A simple pack of cigarettes (at 200 bucks) is almost 5% of their monthly wage and it was obviously a luxury they can’t afford. Now, I could go on giving a discourse on the deterrent effects of a price hike or on the unintended side-effects of other tobacco forms people resorting to. But not today. Not this morning.

This morning, what my friend said just brought up a few questions that have been going around in my mind:

“How much is too much?”- What would it take to make me feel ‘Enough now, I don’t want more’?

“Why do people do the same things every day? And how could they wake up every morning to be the same ?”

“What would make me do so-and-so?” and this could be anything as wide ranging as giving up something to murdering someone. (Disclaimer: I don’t have any plans to actually do these. Yet.)

Every time any of these pop up in my head- oh, and they pop up randomly more often that I’d like- they are accompanied by the song “Little boxes” (originally by Malvina Reynolds, made popular by Walk-off-the-earth) playing in the background.

Truth be told, I just don’t like bend in the question mark ‘?’ (Never could scribble that bend properly by hand). That and the fact that it bugs me to not have means of finding answers. This train of thought had just left the station when I was startled from my reverie by the waiter bringing in my breakfast.

Perhaps it was the rising sun seeping in through the French windows or the lack of air conditioning on a warm, cloudless day. Or I just needed more sleep. After all, it’s a Sunday and I should’ve been in bed at this obscene hour…


PS. If you find the answers to these questions or other important ones like ‘how to draw the perfect ‘?’’ or ‘how to survive a lifetime eating Maggi’ (with lead and all), do write to me and rescue yourself from the drudgery of waking up to the same day, every day.

-MaCh
Bangalore, 7th June, 2015
Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

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