Imperfection

A hectic week in office (which includes feedback, i.e. polite way of saying “nit picking” about consistency in decimal places, font size, font colour, and spacing) with me being stuck in office till midnight on a couple of days followed by stifled dinners, difficult and intense telephone conversations, late night movies and cold wars with my bai (I think sarcasm, and that too in my broken Hindi is wasted on her… I should be more firm and nasty like the middle aged aunties portrayed on TV, but I have no clue how to be like that) have taken a toll on me. But strangely irrespective of how much I crib, irrespective of the fact that I have been told that I act like an immature, impatient 5-year old and irrespective of how my salary seems miniscule compared to what people earn around me, I am a happy person: both generally and specifically.

And finally I have seen some application of Micro Economics in practical life and I can’t express how glad I am!! I mean I have studied this subject, for five years, each time wondering how I can ever apply it in real life simply because it stood on some pretty strong assumptions which rarely hold true in todays dynamic situation. Macro economics, on the other hand, is something which is easily identified with. But, at last, one fine aspect of Micro economics has found favour with me: “the theory of diminishing marginal utility”! and yes, it holds for the big M, i.e. MONEY… the point is that, once you have the basic minimum to sustain yourself, to have a decent lifestyle, that extra thousand bucks really don’t add much value to your life. You can easily do away with it for other things like satisfaction, work life balance, good people, better quality of work, so on and so forth. So after a point, money alone stops being a motivation; but yes, that basic level of financial security is important, and the basic level is defined differently for different people, and thankfully for me, that level is pretty low. So yes, my kids will grow up like I did, they will wear unbranded street clothes, they will eat ghar ka khana (which my husband will make because I am a bad cook) with no junk food, they will play kabaddi and kit kit and pittu instead of fancy video games or playstation portables, they will go to ganpatiphule and goa for vacations instead of fancy foreign trips and they will take education loans to finance their higher education, but most importantly, they will figure out that they don’t need obscene amount of money to be happy!

And yes, I am not ashamed to admit that I have watched Love Aaj Kaal and irrespective of the Brazilian model playing the part of a 1970’s conservative Punjabi kudi, irrespective of cheesy dialogues like mango people (translation of aam aadmi), irrespective of Deepika Padukone’s pathetic acting skills and irrespective of my aversion to commercial Hindi movies, I still liked the movie;

there was a certain imperfection about the movie, a certain imperfection in the characters, and I am a sucker for imperfection…