Tuesday, January 03, 2006

the folly of the poor

no other term would be more appropriate in certain instances where the unrich do what they do so as to propogate their economic backwardness.

this recent outrage on my part has been brought on by the resignation tendered by our household's domestic help. now this is a woman who gets paid 250 bucks a month from us. that she scrubs, cleans and dusts other peoples houses for such sums obviously means that she needs the amount pretty badly. unlike most cases, she's actually the second earner in her family since her husband works as a security guard in a nearby housing complex. no disrespect meant, but he probably doesnt rake it in either. add multpile child care expenses to the monthly bill and their household looks precariously placed on the economic ledge.

at this point of time, the rational reaction would be to take on additional revenue generating duties. but surprisingly, this is not the case. in fact reality is far from the truth. the domestic help needs to get up early in the morning and make breakfast for her husband before she comes to our house. since she has to come over pretty early in the day, since we leave before 9, her mornings are rushed and her husband is unhappy with the state of things. so she decides to stop coming over to our place and also to forgo the earnings generated from this exercise. hello! how is this the natural reaction? i would have thought that the response to this situation would be to wake up a little earlier everyday so as to satisfy all parties.

i grew up in a house where the mother woke up at 4:30 in the morning so as to complete all her tasks for the day so as to be able to be at work at 8. if my mom could do this why cant this chick?

i'm seriously curious. i've been in situations where 250 bucks used to make a sizeable difference to the monthly personal balance sheet. which makes it even more uncomprehensible. why do the poor turn down potential economic opportunities on a consistent basis? is it because they are poor? or are they poor because they turn down these very opportunities?

for those of you who cant identify the scenario with the domestic help, and there must be some of you since even i never had to deal with this till about 6 months ago, here's another more relevant example: autorickshaw/taxicab drivers. these guys would much rather hang around at their designated stands than take fares. their apparent reluctance to ferry you anywhere is made obvious through their extortionary pricing mechanism. but this could be an article for another time.

personally, and this opinion could be biased by way too many things, i guess that if i was as miserably poor as these people are then i'd be stopping just finely short of running myself into the ground in the pursuit of economic comfort. so i'm sure you can see why i cant comprehend the lack of rationality on the part of these guys. if any of you have clarifications or can throw some light on this aspect of their behaviour i'd be much obliged.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Read all your postings. You write well. What I liked was the originality of your experiences. You might consider contributing articles to some of the newspapers.

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