All about money?

At the Deccan Gymkhana end of Karve road, next to the Airtel showroom, there is a small Xerox shop. It opened about a year ago, with a single xerox machine. Now it has 3 xerox machines, a lamination machines, 3 computers with LCD monitors for DTP work and a lot of stationary as well.

Ive been going to this shop for my xeroxing regularly, and Ive seen the fast progress that it has made. The owner is just 25 years old, a Std. 10 drop out. But thats not the interesting part. A few shops down the line, there sits a quaint little flour mill, owned by a couple, Mr. Bhave and Mrs. Bhave. The mill is the size of the xerox shop, and next to it as another shop of the same size, also owned by the Bhaves.

This adjacent shop, is devoid of any furnishings. There is no paint, no carpet, no tables and no cupboards. All it has is two plastic chairs, and a stool on which a old fashioned telephone is kept. While the flour mill is doing business, Mr. Bhave sits on one of these chairs, and watches the traffic go by.

The last I heard, he has been offered 2 crores for the shop. It is prime Karve road property, ground floor, right on the road. All you would have to do is park and within 10 steps you would be right onside the shop. But he has been declining similiar offers for the past 3 months. Why?

" What will I do with so much money ? I dont have any children, " he says. "With more money, come more problems."

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Just a couple of months ago, I was having a discussion with a friend. A common friend had just gotten a wedding gift of 2 crores ruppes cash. Wow, I said. You could simply invest those 2 crores and turn them into 10 crores within no time !!!

" Not possible, " my friend corrected me. " There is no way you can turn 2 crores into 10 crores. ".
"Why?" I cried. " Ok, the shares are at an all time low, but you could buy gold, you could buy lots of prime properties... "

" There is massive property correction going on in the US right now", my friend said. " It wont be long, before the ridiculous property prices here coming crashing down as well. "Gold? How much gold will you buy ? Where will you keep all of it ?"

" The only benefit I see of getting 2 crores in hand, is security. You could buy a nice big house for yourself. Buy a better office. And just stash the rest as security", he concluded.

I fell quiet.

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These two incidences made me re-think the whole "money" concept. I quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
"This planet [earth] has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy".

Would you rather be Mr. Bhave, being offered 2 crore rupees, more than enough for him to pack uo his dusty flour mill and live the rest of his years in prime luxury, or would you rather be my friend, having got 2 crore rupees with which to do as he pleases, but seeing no profitable venture in sight ?