Rupees, Dirhams, and Growing Up
Rupees, Dirhams, and Growing Up
From Borrowing to Becoming
Whichever way I looked at it, my salary refused to behave itself. By the last two weeks of every month, it would shrink into nothingness, leaving me wandering — somewhat sheepishly — into my mother’s room. She never asked unnecessary questions; she simply opened her purse and handed me a fifty rupees, sometimes two. In those years, she was my permanent bank, my monthly lender of hope. And she lent with the amused certainty of someone who knew I would be back again in a fortnight, pockets empty, promises well-rehearsed.
It had all begun rather innocently with small borrowings of ten rupees. But like so many habits picked up in youth, the amounts grew with alarming ease. By month’s end, I would owe her one or two hundred, and be left with perhaps a hundred and fifty to carry on with my worldly ambitions.
Then, when I turned eighteen, my father handed me a savings passbook. Seven hundred rupees he had quietly saved over the years — his thoughtful attempt at encouraging thrift. It lasted no more than a few months. The money flowed easily into weekend trips, shirts and pants I fancied, small kindnesses to friends, cigarettes smoked in street corners, and the occasional drink that tasted far more sophisticated than it was.
Less than half my salary — quite a respectable sum in those days, enough to feed a family — found its way back to me. The rest vanished into loans and repairs to my Lambretta scooter, that proud but temperamental creature that drank petrol at Rs 3.50 a gallon and demanded attention like a spoilt child — carburettor changes, loose plugs, mysterious sputters. While sensible men rode bicycles, I clung to my Lambretta with the misplaced dignity of youth, never mind that it shook my finances more than it shook the roads of Colombo.
When even my mother’s patience and purse ran dry, I turned to the co-operative society at work. They lent me five hundred rupees, and from then on fifty rupees disappeared from my salary every month — another gentle reminder that affluence, at least for me, was a fleeting visitor.
So the years drifted on — more enthusiasm than earnings, more dreams than discipline. And when the time came for me to leave Sri Lanka, I had exhausted every financial lifeline available. But I also carried a strange sense of hope, for Dubai was said to offer freedom from the tight corners of one’s past.
Because of the restrictions imposed by the government at the time, I left the country with only ten American dollars in my pocket. My father, ever the quiet guardian, settled my remaining debts: the bond at my apprentice that ran to thousands of Rupees, the co-operative loan, and whatever was owed on the old scooter that had long been waiting for repairs. I left it behind — a wounded companion of my reckless youth.
Dubai was a new beginning. For my first week’s work at the InterContinental, I was paid two hundred and seventy-five dirhams — about eight hundred rupees. To me, it seemed a princely sum, a figure I had only dreamed of while living under my parents’ roof and my own poor saving habits.
One of my earliest desires in Sri Lanka had been a stereo cassette player, which cost an impossible Rs 4,500. In Dubai, I could buy one — shiny and brand new — from the Toshiba showroom in Deira for two hundred and fifty dirhams. Naturally, I bought it and shipped it home. The pleasure of giving can sometimes feel richer than the pleasure of owning.
I worked in the telex department at the hotel. Most guests were businessmen dealing in petro-dollars, and a prompt telex meant a profitable day. They rewarded me with generous tips — thirty, sometimes fifty dirhams by the end of a shift. I resolved, in a rare moment of wisdom, that I would live entirely on my tips and save my salary in the bank.
Slowly, a plan took shape. In two years, I would buy a small Honda Civic — a car that I dreamt of, fifteen thousand dirhams for a brand-new one. For home, I would buy a washing machine, a stereo set with many decks, a sewing machine, clothes, a bicycle for my brother, frocks for my sister, shirts and trouser material for my father, and coloured Japanese sarees for my mother. All of that, I calculated, might cost five thousand dirhams. In two years, I need to save twenty thousand dirhams. Plans were set and I was into it.
So the simple budget of a young man far from home was drawn: give or take twenty thousand dirhams in two years. A modest dream, perhaps — but dreams, like small seeds, often begin quietly before they grow into the stories one remembers a lifetime later.
Comments
Post a Comment