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I by no means imagined a day would come after I must shell out 100 rupees for a mango, however that’s what I did the opposite day, with tears in my eyes. There was a time, simply earlier than the final battle, after I would have been laughed out of court docket, had I paid even a paisa for a mango or, for that matter, for a jackfruit or a coconut or a pineapple, for they weren’t the sort you purchased out there. They grew on bushes and all you needed to do was pluck them.
This was, as I stated, earlier than the battle, when a rupee was a rupee, however it was so scarce that you simply not often noticed it. My uncle, a shrewd businessman, was operating our household farms, however we consumed what we grew, and there was little or no exhausting money on the finish of the day. A lot of the work on the farms was finished by younger boys like me through the holidays, however it was all within the household and no person bought paid, although once we returned to the cities for our research, we got a rupee every.
It’s shocking how self-sufficient we have been, as a household. We had coconuts and mangoes, and tall, slim space nut bushes, they usually offered us with all the pieces we would have liked, together with cooking oil and all of the cashew nuts and pineapples you could possibly eat. We boys did all of the work, together with loading coconuts on bullock carts, stripping them, and drying them within the solar earlier than taking them to the ghani, the place the kernels have been pressed and later fed to the cattle. Gandhi ji would have been pleased with us.
Now, or course, no person climbs coconut bushes, for it’s cheaper to purchase them out there. No one goes to the farms any extra both, for the household is scattered everywhere in the world, and we do not get collectively even as soon as in ten years. And the nuts dry up on the palm bushes, unsung and unwept, aside from red-tailed monkeys who pounce on them earlier than the monsoons, although the monkeys too usually give them a large berth. It is exhausting work, even for a hungry monkey.
As I stated, we not often noticed exhausting money, for we weren’t the one individuals with surplus coconuts and mangoes, and all the pieces was grime low cost. Cash was so tight you not often noticed it. Till I went overseas, I had not seen a Rs 100 be aware, and even a Rs 10 be aware was a small fortune. Only a few individuals had jobs earlier than the battle, and even a peon in a authorities workplace in Bombay – because it was then recognized – was handled like a maharajah in some neighbourhoods.
In our village, one other uncle of mine ran a small grocery store, and I helped him through the holidays, as I used to be by then within the faculty, and never solely may do giant sums, however knew one thing known as calculus, by which you handled letters as an alternative of figures. My uncle offered issues like cleaning soap – together with Lux cleaning soap, which was very fashionable in these days although now it’s used solely by movie stars – hair oil, sweet for young children, imported marbles, and naturally, stuff like rice and lentils, which I helped him pack and tie up with a cotton string.
However we not often acquired cash for it. All the pieces was on barter foundation, and typically we needed to settle for even recent fish – which stank to the heavens – in lieu of cooking oil or rice. As I stated, there was little or no money coming in, although we knew we have been doing good enterprise.
Come to think about it, issues are usually not all that completely different now. No one carries money anymore – similar to 50 or 60 years in the past when cash was scarce – and all you will have in your pocket are bank cards, dozens and dozens of them, and never a single foreign money be aware or coin. That is true in every single place, even in small villages, the place youngsters purchase ice cream from parlours and whip out a bank card to settle the invoice.
The extra issues change, the extra they continue to be the identical. We’re again to the cashless economic system in any case these years, and thousands and thousands and billions of {dollars} change arms on the press of a button or the flick of a swap. My uncle, who in all probability by no means got here throughout a Rs 100 be aware in his lifetime, would have been fairly at residence within the new economic system.
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