Random Thoughts

it is strange to see how your life starts getting ruled by money matters sooner than you realize. one moment you are there with your friend chatting idly, sharing your thoughts and thinking that this friendship will always remain strong, pristine and totally uncorrupted by the earthly things related to money. but alas !!!! times change, people change, though one always likes to believe that one is that same little innocent boy that one was when 5-year old. sooner before he/she realizes, the friendship gets eroded at the very core, and the vestige stands precariously on that very base of materialism that he/she had once wanted so desperately to avoid.

it is very hard to realize when you have lost your facade of innocence. but when you do, quite ironically, it doesn't hurt you as much as you had thought. probably this explains why people get so much anxious when someone criticizes them, why there are professional classes on how to deal with criticism. when the veil of integrity and morality is so thin, so silky, you hardly notice when it falls off......


and today i had just that same experience. my friend is having some problems with his academic career and so is unable to accompany me to a foreign university which had selected us to spend a term there. we both were supposed to get scholarships, but somehow i didn't. today i called to enquire about the status of his application. what i am thinking is that if he has got it, probably that can be transferred to my application.
now let's think about the situation from that other guy's perspective. for him, i am a person who didn't call him when he was in trouble. he himself had to call me to seek for some solace. i never enquired about his well-being in a new and unknown city (not that i could have done anything about that, but still i should have done that out of sheer courtesy). and one day i do finally call him. the reason: to enquire about my own status of application. the conversation, quite predictably, was focused on the topic of interest to me. never even once i could ask him about his own work.

it is not that i am happy with my own attitude. given a choice, i would have loved to talk to him before this fateful day about things that concerned him. but i couldn't do that coz my stupid mobile phone never had enough balance in it. i didn't get any enjoyment out of that conversation. to me, the phone call was like asking a beggar how much he was willing to get paid for the last strand of clothing left on his body. but i couldn't have done otherwise. i did have to think about my own financing. there was, and is, money involved. and there is lots of it. then if i say to my friend that everything, and everybody, in this world has a price tag attached to him/her, am i wrong?.......innocence comes dirt-cheap, it only takes green rectangular pieces of paper to buy that.....