My father has been badgering me to take an interest in personal finance for as long as I can remember. Even last week, during my mandatory call home, he said, “I am too old now to run around tracking your PPFs and NSCs and SIPs. When will you grow up and take responsibility for your money, huh? If you continue to remain sunk in financial illiteracy—with zero inclination to save or invest or think about the future—you’ll end up begging on the streets when you’re 75.”
add_main_image“Dad, relax,” I said. “One, I don’t plan on surviving till 75. Two, so many great artists and writers have died in poverty, it’s no big deal.”
There was a pause, followed by a deep sigh.NextMAds
“Muruga-Shanmuga,” he intoned, seeking divine intervention, “Please drill some sense into this boy’s head before it is too late.” Then the line went dead. This was pretty standard for our fortnightly conversations—he exhorting me to save/invest, and me brushing it off as the fatherly eccentricity of an old man. Besides, I found his patronizing attitude to my financial competence (or the presumed lack of it) rather unfair.
Whose fault is it that money matters have assumed an all-consuming importance in today’s world? Not mine. After all, there have been other epochs and other civilizations when money wasn’t everything—when honour was far more important, when a man’s worth was measured in how much good he did to the community, or in how many beers he could down at one go.
I just happened to be born in the wrong era. As someone with a strong antipathy for anything to do with finance—personal and impersonal—I’ve steered clear of stuff like EMIs, mutual funds, investments, etc. They are boring, life-deadening, transaction-based, dehumanizing forms of activity that have no space for love, romance, beauty, grace, nobility or any form of spontaneous human expression that could potentially enrich the spirit or uplift the soul.
And yet, unlike what my father imagines, I do make an effort now and then to keep track of the latest developments in the world of finance, which is how I came across an exciting news report this week titled, ‘Eager buyers turn India into EMI nation’.
The article, surprisingly, made sense even to someone like me who boasts of a financial IQ lower than his weight in metric tonnes. It was an eye-opener for me because I had always associated EMIs with heavy duty stuff like home loans and car loans and interest rates that undertake mysterious manoeuvres like rising, falling, and—this being the monsoon season—floating. I had believed them to be financial trickery designed to turn you into a post-modern avatar of an indentured labourer for 20 years or more, until you’ve paid back all your debt. But I realized how wrong I was.
EMIs are actually fun. They encourage you to stop taking life way too seriously, stop thinking about the future—and live in the moment. If saving for a rainy day was the mantra of my father’s generation, getting wet in the monsoon is the mantra of the current generation. It is no longer a question of saving up to reward yourself with something you deserve, such as a new pair of jeans. It is about going out and pampering yourself today because you’re entitled to whatever is your heart’s desire, and who knows what will happen tomorrow? sixthMAds
The EMI, then, is the financial materialization of the carpe diem ethos. It empowers you to own or enjoy what you don’t have the money to purchase by encouraging you to mistake ability for affordability. By putting in your hand cash that you are yet to earn, it enables you to enjoy in the present by making a claim on your future.
Moving far beyond the eternal EMI favourites such as the car and the home, today the empire of the EMI encompasses almost everything money can buy: smart phones of every variety, laptops, gaming consoles, watches, vacations, sunglasses, flight tickets, gold necklaces, diamond rings, a pair of jeans, beauty and skin care treatments such as hair removal, skin-tightening and Botox, and life-altering products/services such as hair transplants, penis enlargement capsules, and brand new smiles and figures.
Besides, there is a major psychological service that EMIs perform for you, at no extra cost. They help you to forget—at the crucial moment—the real cost of living. There is a name for people who forget—and are persuaded to forget—the real cost of living: consumers.
Not surprisingly, EMIs tend to focus on consumer goods. The only products not available on EMI right now are the necessities of life, such as groceries, petrol, alcohol, etc. But this could soon change. Our electricity bill last month was higher than our home loan EMI. Given how the prices are going north even as the economy seems headed south, I would say it’s only a matter of time before we find ourselves buying atta and eggs on EMI—at zero percent interest, of course. Thank god for EMIs.
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