As you can imagine, it pains me to write this article. Every element of my Marwari being rebels against even putting this title to paper. But occasionally, one must choose art over commerce just to keep Bengali readers happy. So, I am happy this article will satisfy my Bengali commie comrades even as it alienates my capitalist Marwari brethren. Now, let us proceed on this path of financial mayhem.
1. Bet on that dancing Insta reel girl: Fall for her lip-synced soothing voice to the latest international numbers and marvel at her ability to flawlessly lip-sync Korean and Spanish songs as well. Gawk in disbelief when the doomscrolling suddenly cuts to a reel with her real voice as you hear her speak in a broken Hinglish that demotes her from St. Stephens to the South 24 Parganas. Fall for her soothing words as she explains in a childish narcissistic toddler’s voice how you are a fool for not making 100% profit like her. Ponder over your foolishness in not investing in her gaming and betting app earlier and hand over your life’s earnings in the hopes that you will be handed over the phone number of what is probably an AI figure. But enough about the real reason for why the algorithm is encouraging hundreds of different kinds of women to dance to the exact same sequence.
2. Lend money to a friend: Nothing can cement the bonds of friendship quickly than lending money to a friend who is very prompt in returning with excuses rather than your money. Happily, get gaslit as he constantly shames you for having more money than him and keeps reminding you of that one time in first standard they gave you a pencil, which was chewed at the other end. You ponder whether investing in Natraj pencils had been a better investment than investing in this moral eraser. I saw an Indian Insta-reeler coolly admonish foreigners for being so backwards in expecting friends to go Dutch at a dinner. According to his Indian overconfidence, our ways are much more evolved, where it’s the richest friend who pays the bill for everyone at the table. Now you can decide if the person saying this is ever likely to be that richest friend. But enough about finfluencers and the algorithms.
3. Trust your government: I presume one need not even elaborate on this point, but then the editors insist this is a humour column, so here goes: Believe the ‘fun nance’ minister when she said the rupee was the currency of the future... even though the currency futures markets say otherwise. Throw away all your worthless US dollars and stack your house with swadeshi bricks err BRICS currency.
4. Trust your family: Believe them when they try to convince you that real-life families are also like a Sooraj Barjatya film. And real-life family members are like reel-life Alok Nath and not real-life Alok Nath. Don’t bother making a will and trust your children to sort things out amongst themselves. Wait till your passing so you can enjoy watching the fur, err love, fly.
5. Focus on the trending over your unique competencies: If it’s not a hashtag, it’s not happening and it never happened. Disappear into oblivion chasing every trending business, political and cultural issue. Turn into a cartoon caricature of yourself so you can easily be replaced by AI bots and dolls. And no one will be able to tell the difference. Including yourself.
Follow me into oblivion by hitting like, share and subscribe. So even if we both lose money, at least we will lose ourselves together.
The author is a Marwari investment banker turned corporate comedian. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the website.
