A Worthy Man

I was wondering what my worth is. A friend of mine told me that he is worth several crores. The Ambanis are worth several times more. All our politicians are worth quite a lot. The Bachhans and Khans and Kapoors, you name them, they are all worth quite a lot.
In management parlance, in “quantifiable, measurable terms”, I began wondering what I’m worth.

I took stock of my books. And newspapers and magazines. Books are a heavier lot. One good collection of “The Book of Knowledge” weighs a whopping 20 kgs. Amazing, isn’t it? The paper quality is however too good to be used like newspapers. Anyway, I had no intention to sell my books. I just wanted to calculate my net worth. And I felt that one of the greatest assets that I possess are my books. Ok, zilch there in “accounting” terms.

Then I looked into my purse. Yeah, I do keep some sweat-stained, crumpled, scribbled old notes there. Now that is more like it. I was on the right track. Of late I have developed this fascination for hoarding those big red notes that is so crisp, clean and has a nice smell too. The problem with it is that it never stays in my purse. They say a fool and his money are soon parted. In my case, the “soon” is in micro-seconds. Poof.

Ok, let me get back to my point. My worth. I look at my deposits. Ok, just kidding. By this time, my huge ego had deflated to the size of a pin head. And it was growing smaller. This was a very bad idea. This business of worth!

Anyway, since I started the exercise, I thought I might as well finish it. I made two columns.
Under Assets, I wrote down – 78 Kgs Books (Packed in two shelves and 3 boxes), Music, 318 articles on Sulekha, 106 poems, 86 pens (7 in writing condition), One old Yamaha Keyboard, An Old Acoustic Guitar with three good strings, A computer and a laptop.

Under Liabilities – I put – Independence of thought, Rebelliousness, Arrogance, Sarcasm, Treating everyone as equals, Chronic foot-in-mouth syndrome and so on.

Somehow it didn’t look quite right. I have never some across anyone writing a list like this. Maybe I should take the help of an auditor and make the assess my net worth. Now why did want to do that? Oh yeah. A friend of mine was talking about the worth of a man.

I have heard of people being made to sit in a weighing scale and on the other pan, they fill gold coins. So this business of “worth” has been going on for a very long time. And I hear that the greatest ambition of any businessman is to increase his ‘worth’, till he reaches a list of 100. And then climb to the top of that list. A worthy cause indeed.

I was sitting and brooding about the fact that I had no business to reach that “top 100 among the worthiest persons in the world” when my little nephew walked in. He came straight to me, gave me a big hug and asked me to tell him a story.

That moment, I felt like a worthy man.

Story ID:	4223
Written by:	MVJ Simon (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Story
Location:	Chennai India
Year:	2008
Person:	MVJ Simon