What money can’t buy – and why

Recently, a friend was talking about his retirement plan at the age before fifty and he had some goals to meet with the money accumulated. His goals were typical like buying a weekend home, daughter education and marriage, buy a new upper class car and foreign tour once every three years. He was just getting a third opinion from me since he and his wife had reached the consensus that they had enough money already in kitty. So, we discussed some risks and unforeseen events etcetera and signed off. At the end, he mentioned hesitantly to us that he also wanted a complete peace of mind and hoped to get it with meditation and confidence of financial planning. I wished him best and parted ways.

Yes, this is something what money can buy. If you have some more money, you can buy even a personal small jet. As one of my friends put it, money can buy anything and everything – from machines at home to top ranking officers in government offices and from best education for kids to most exotic vacations on the earth. Everything can be bought because everything has been monetized. Buying property is a very basic thing what money can buy. Someone looks for a 45^th floor apartment in a high rise near sea in Mumbai, someone yearns for a villa up in a hill station, someone finds ultimate pleasure in owning a sprawling farm with a farmhouse. All done.

When I think about myself, I surprisingly find that I don’t need nothing like this from my money. I have enough money to buy some property somewhere, and to be frank, that was my goal as well up to 5 years ago. Now that I have enough money, I don’t find it a dream worth chasing. Why? I analysed myself. Then a very old image popped up in my mind. This image was based on a real picture I had seen in my late childhood days some thirty five years ago.

I see a vast canvas of sprawling nature from a bird’s eye view as I sat atop a hillock near a village. I see plane land with various ornaments surrounded by tame mountains here and there under the large hood of clear blue sky. The land comprising primarily of farmland with shades of green and yellow crop, with patches of baron cattle grass, wild vegetation and of course, the nice beautiful village in the middle. The village having the only temple at the centre with a waving saffron flag atop and the small dwellings huddled around it. The village boundaries lined randomly with a few large trees swinging lightly in their own mood. A tiny river flowing curvaceously at a respectable distance from the village with no activity on its bluish clear water. The fields around the village dotted with herds of cattle grazing leisurely. A complete black field under the cover of black and white sheep with shepherd underneath a tree on the boundary. Slight strings of smoke twirling up from the houses and some fields. Some mountains showing quite a detail on them being nearby while some faraway showing just the outline and greyish skin keeping the rest of details for guessing. A complete baron land as the background everywhere else showing pure abundance of earth. Just to compete with the abundance boasted above by the blue sky. The sky with a few white clouds hanging here and there lazying and some kites circling slowly.

This is not a poetic presentation of an imaginary picture, as I said earlier I actually witnessed it. It was a summer vacation leisure trip to countryside relatives in Ichalkaranji, district Kolhapur and this one a special part of it to a rarely visited relative in a village called Tardaal. I was with my cousins from that locale who were telling me hearsay about some dacoits who roamed in one of the mountains. This picture emerged from the bottom of my mind today and I wished if I could get to live rest of my life there – in that picture. I would like to have a small two rooms plus backyard, front porch house towards the outer edge of the village so that I can just put an easy chair in veranda and watch the vast canvas forever.

How much would it cost? No way money can buy this even though it looks dirt cheap in front of other ‘properties’ wished by folks. For, the village houses have been converted into concrete pucca houses, approach roads made of tar with quite a traffic of buses and tum tums plying. The old style temple has been ‘renovated’ with colourful concrete structure double the size and height of the original one with glossy metallic tridents atop. The fields around the village have been either converted into non-agricultural plots or monotonously bearing a single crop of sugarcane. The river has almost vanished and the cattle are grazing inside closed stables.

This simple picture is something money can’t buy for me. I can’t complain that things have changed so much, because I admit even I have changed so much – I never thought of buying that picture thirty five years ago when it got embossed on my mind as I didn’t know buying with money then.