living the good life, without the goods

just about sums up our life here. the common impression of the gulf indian is that they are rich because they live a poor life. but we are the healthy anti thesis. we are poor because we live the rich life.

spa treatments, gourmet dinners, boutique shopping...by we i mean me, mine and our friends who sport similar feathers. we flock together for a reason! we really do live the good life, and are broke by the first week of the month; fortunately there is no wet blanket in the guise of common sense telling us 'be smart, you are here to save, not to have fun (and probably end up in debt)'.

our dinner table conversation every weekend is about the amount of money people around us have... especially that man who just passed by, staring disbelievingly at us, the bunch of indians, sitting in a restaurant that easily costs $50 a head for a light meal. he is driving his landcruiser prado (the dream machine of every gulf indian), wearing his peter england shirt and bata shoes bought during his last trip home.

we are also talking about ms money bags who looked shocked that we were walking out of whistles with shopping bags. you know she has money in her bags because 10 kilos of gold weigh her down; really worn chappals prop her up; fragged bra strap slip off her shoulder and peep out under the transparent sleeve of the jazzy kameez bought at Lulu Hypermarket. and she is wondering where our husbands work (and how out of control the men were) to let us shop at whistles, and wear shoes from Nine West or Milano... snooty indians, they are too good for lulu and parthas, or what?and 'snooty indians' look at her with equal disdain... enough gold on her to write off the debt of an impoverished african country, but still does a mental conversion while spending money on 'chappals'. as we grudge her all the ready cash (definitely not the prehistoric bra), she grudges us the tons of money she assumes we have...

in my assessment there is a very fine line that separates the two types... we both place way too much emphasis on money: one by hoarding, another by burning it.

ps1: appraisals around the corner, and i am not really so bothered by the hike; because i know for sure, for me, earning more is not equal to having more. it only means spending more.

ps2: just as i complete ps1, i hear oprah on tv, say this: "nobody is living the life you think they are, behind closed doors." righto lady!