Bye Bye Love for Money?
Bina is 29, mother of a three-month baby boy, and working as a Tech Lead in a top-notch IT company. Her hubby migrated to the United Kingdom shortly after marriage. While she was battling through her pregnancy shuttling between work and home wishing fervently that hubby dear was around to fulfill her cravings, her hubby was busy working long hours and setting up a home for his wife and son to join him.
Sushma is 32, mother of two kids—one just starting Montessori while the other is just learning to toddle. She and her hubby have plans to find jobs abroad preferably in the UK. Finally Sushma’s prayers were heard and her company sent her on a six-month deputation to the UK.
Situations sound familiar? Increasingly people in their mid 20s and early 30s are emigrating from India in search of lucrative jobs to be able to afford a better lifestyle. While bidding adieu to the family, relatives, and friends, they start their careers in foreign lands among strangers who don’t speak their language (or in their accents) and try building a social life from scratch. Scrimping money by living in the suburbs, commuting by public transport, slaving long hours at office hoping for a quick promotion, cooking their own food eaten with pickles and chutney powder packed from home, doing your own cleaning and laundry, life is anything but a bed of roses. Most even cut down on long-distance calls by using Google Talk or Skypes or similar software to hear from their loved ones. Trip to India is decided by the gravity of the situation: Dada’s (un)expected kicking of the bucket or cousin’s shaadi.
Back at home, with increased jobs and astronomical pay packages in the IT industry and increased demand for car and home loans, young employees are able to book 3-BHK luxury apartments, drive a mid-size cars (or have a chauffeur), have maids/cooks/babysitters and still remain close to family and friends.
Everyone is busy chasing a dream. There is no more Keeping up with the Joneses to do but overtaking or beating the Jones to show that you have more pelf. So where did our priorities change from being able to look after our folks in their old age to abandoning them in pursuit of more moolah? When did love leave the world leaving behind cut-throat competition, mutual distrust, backstabbing, and immeasurable selfishness and greed? Even Alexander the Great, who had conquered most of the world by the time he turned 30, only had one request to make on his death bed, which was to lay bare his arms out of the coffin for others to see (and realize) that even he, who had conquered the world was taking nothing with him while leaving the world.
When will we realize this truth and start living? Can money buy back the youth and family and friends and the quality time spent with them? Can money buy back the time when your dad wished to see your face once before closing his eyes, or when your mom wanted to share the joy of booting the computer without anyone’s help, or your siblings’ latest crushes or gripes over bosses, or fulfilling your wife’s cravings during her pregnancy and being there to hold her hands during her delivery to smile and comfort her that everything was going to be just fine because you are with her? Or will all those moments just be a moment of the past, which will be clicked or taped to be sent to you via e-mail?
Is love worth sacrificing for money? Mother Teresa once remarked, "There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread". You have the choice; Choose wisely with your heart!