The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Cheap)

This is a long overdue post, but for whatever reasons, I have never addressed it exclusively on this blog. This is about my compulsive obsession with being cheap. While staying away from home on a limited budget does make one more financially conscious, I have always pushed the boundaries of cheapness to a new extent. And being an accountant’s daughter who has seen her parents find happiness over a “balanced” account statement, I take pride in managing my money (whatever little I have) down to the last rupee, despite my aversion to numbers. The only two exceptions are clothes and travel, where I don’t compromise.

My MBA friends still regale each other with stories of my Gandhigiri, where I would walk for miles (from the highway to campus) in the heat, just to avoid paying the autowala through my nose…

Even in Mumbai, I still take the 2nd class train over a cab, or walk it down rather than take an auto…

I travel all the way down to Crawford Market (in aforementioned 2nd class train) to buy cosmetics from a wholesale shop rather than splurge on Body Shop in Palladium…

I buy accessories in local trains/Colaba Causeway rather than from showrooms…

I don’t have a maid or a cook and happily devote my weekends to domestic chores…

I avoid luxuries like a smartphone or an AC and I sell old newspapers at Rs. 9 a kg…

I borrow old books from a library rather than buy them (no, not even on Flipkart)…

Thankfully, most of my friends are thrifty as they also have to make rent/pay EMIs/start up new businesses, so we eat at cheap restaurants, drink during happy hours, watch morning show movies and gift each other knick knacks from Archies Gallery on birthdays.

Having said that, I went to a “townie” undergrad college, where the crowd is very different (read sophisticated rich women who still manage to intimidate me) and when I am part of some social event where I run into them (like this weekend), I still feel like the 18-year-old timid girl with a bad dressing sense, looking down at the floor, wishing there was a hole through which she could disappear forever!

So why am I so cheap?

Partly, it’s because of an inherent sense of justice. If I know someone is taking me for a ride, I would avoid it even if it means additional inconvenience for me.

Partly, it’s because I appreciate the importance of financial security, especially given the low job security in my industry, my constant struggle with authority and the elusive "dream" of quitting my job to become a writer.

But mostly, it’s because of my middle class upbringing, where I have seen my parents struggle for the better part of my childhood.

You can take the girl out of the rented two-room apartment in a modest locality in Kolkata but you can’t take the rented two-room apartment in a modest locality in Kolkata out of the girl…