How to value money, I wanna know

As a lirsquol kid somebody told me about a scene in a Tamil picture thatrsquos stayed with me while I never got to watch it A clueless bloke at a busstop observes a fellow with a cigarette go up to someone asking for matchesThe matchbox is instantly shared that he lights up with and leaves Itrsquos a lightbulb moment for the clueless bloke He goes up to the fellow then with matches ldquoOkay now give me cigarettesrdquo he demands He gets thrown outThat was a comic flick What did it say about the value of objects In an economy with too many cigarettes and fewer matches the value of the latter will be far more The unlit ciggie is uselessOf course the price of anything depends on its cost of production first The cigarette therefore is more valuable Itrsquos another matter how the price of matches has remained the same since Irsquove known them to exist over decadesmdashstill offered for free if you ask for them in certain placesRelative scarcity and simple cost of production apart how do you evaluate the price of an object My sense is it depends entirely on whorsquos selling it Take the surge pricing on OlaUber It can go up to a flight ticket depending on timelocationMy Bombay airport cabbie tells me the pricing on his dashboard was R1800 from Terminal 1 to Belapur last evening He couldnrsquot confirm the ride Somebody mustrsquove paid ldquoItne mein he couldrsquove gone to Poonardquo he laughsRecall examples from your entire life when the cabbieautorickshaw guy has demanded ldquoextrardquo for a ride he doesnrsquot find convincing enough to go by the allweather meter Wersquove balked at the ldquooverchargingrdquo ldquoDonrsquot screw up this city you cheatrdquo I blast him all the timeWe quietly pay for surgepricing on OlaUber screwing up the market entirely for the less fortunate The privileged become a burden on the poorThat money doesnrsquot go to the cabbie It goes to the techbro who once designed a ridesharing app Same argument extends from vanity art posh realestate to lsquoluxury productsrsquomdashatmospherics of happiness that money can buyPeople haggling with street vendors over applemango prices happily fish out 1000 times that amount for AppleMango products This bragging right from phones to fashion bear a nonnegotiable priceThis is how the rich get richer by the rich alone with big money mostly circulating at the topThe psychology of money suggests if you own an AppleMangoMerc it merely means yoursquore less rich by the price you paid for them The ownership is however meant to socially signal that the price doesnrsquot matter to you Only if thatrsquos the case yoursquore fine We all care for money Difference is in the decimalHow do you make that money From each other Through work ie delivering goodsservices sometimes with its own wonky methods of attaching valueYou could also be ldquoprivately richrdquo euphemism for inheritance given your insecure ancestors assuming immortality acquired way more than their need They laboured left you chillWhat does this money mean Freedom foremost In the sense that you can just take that OlaUber at R1800 instead of lining up for a BEST bus after yoursquove got off a planeHow is this freedom earned By salaried classes more often than not through progressively surrendering personal freedomsmdashespecially if money the tradeoff has become a natural trap Itrsquos oppressivedepressing to downgrade from material aspirationsluxuriesessentials once yoursquore used to them The bar is set You soldier on The employer is happyUnless of course yoursquore already doing something you could for freemdashprimarily the definition for what we term passion Itrsquos rare The pleasure is such that paisa doesnrsquot matterYoursquore lucky if that accidental passion is to pursue say cricket And not kho kho kabaddi carpentrymdashalso a coincidence that Irsquove hardly ever met anyone equally pursuing the less lucrative passionsOnce you excel also rare the money is the byproduct Itrsquos still in its nature to be passed on From you as the current source of origin it can land anywhere Not to sound preachy here Philanthropy is beyonad mostBut the feeling of having fulfilled something for someone else especially a loved one imbues money with a sense of pleasurable purpose reserved exclusively for those with enough to spareIt is strangely selffulfilling The less privileged sadly donrsquot experience that pleasure so much Itrsquos their loss And if you donrsquot indulge in it regardless you are only as rich as the poor anyway Misers splurge only on selfThere is an old clip of an interview of mine with actororator Ashutosh Rana going viral on WhatsApp Quoting his spiritual guru Daddaji Rana speaks about how accounting for friendsfamily if you consume 25 rotis but hoard 80 what happens to the leftoversldquoLike stale food diseases the body stalestagnant wealth diseases the mind We own a 5000 sq ft home But we live only in 500 sq ft In the rest of the 4500 sq ft resides our egoarrogancerdquoFor those like me who canrsquot afford the 5000 sq ft anyway lsquodil ko behlane ko yeh khayal bhi accha hairsquo this is a good thought GhalibMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper