Bread, Thread and Roof-Spread

Bread, Thread and Roof-Spread a.k.a Roti Kapda aur Makaan

I’ve grown up hearing these as our basic necessities. Necessities, did I say?
Just peep into any social-networking site and browse through your friends’ list of
“5 things I can’t live without” section (including mine) and you’ll be introduced to a whole new dimension.

Today in an urban life with decent salaries, the newly defined necessities are a far cry:
1) Fancy cell phone / smart phone
For most times, we don’t even know all the features available in our model. Yet, we constantly keep comparing it to the other models. The most we really do apart from answering or making calls are take silly meaningless pictures or listen to music during travel time. And we add to the colossal chaos of irritating loud ring-tones / caller tunes. Imagine you are mad at some sales agent who duped you. You call him and his caller tune goes “Nothing’s gonna change my love for you”
Trring Trring anyone?

2) A vehicle (Four-wheeler or a two-wheeler)
Riding the bus / train or any public transport is below dignity. Global warming can go to hell but we wouldn’t want to get caught in the crowd and burn in hell. We’d love to talk about the EMI’s on the vehicles and the rising fuel costs… But hey Honk Honk!!!

3) iPods and the likes
We may never listen to all the songs that are stored in our so called music players – but we still need extreme storage capacity devices. The GENNEXT has indeed moved from “Gimme More” to “GB More”

4) Branded Apparel and accessories
You walk across or walk on filth in any city in India. Yet, we need designer shoes.
So we can go Walk Walk – Yuck Yuck!
After all, we may use it to blow our noses in, but we still need branded handkerchiefs. I can understand presentable clothing but what’s the obsession with staying “in vogue” and wearing expensive tattered and torn denim literally going thread bare.
Is this what “Thread” meant?

5) The latest technology in DTH viewing
We never know what to watch. We end up flipping the channels up and down a couple times before we get frustrated and give up. However, we need the channel count to go up. We need the interactive features although we have other humans in the house to interact with. That probably explains “Ghar Ghar mein Tan Tana Tan”

6) A sleek HDTV
The most we end up watching is a regular soap or a millionth re-run of a movie.
Some may claim to watch the discoveries and natgeo’s – but how much?
And the low quality news channels definitely do not deserve the hi-definition. Don’t forget to send in your Hi-Def vote through SMS.

7) Hanging out at the malls / coffee shops and partying at fine dining restaurants, lounges and/or bars
Excessive Coffee, fast-food, smoking and alcohol may all be harmful. But that is not directly proportional to excessive bragging about them. Please bear with me while I get my Aspirin and Coffee.

The list is endless…
And I’m equally guilty of all of the above in varied degrees.

Now, let’s do some reality check.
How many hours do we have in a day?
The answer is 24

How many hours do we sleep in a day?
The answer should be 8 BUT it really varies between 4 and 7 on an average.

How many hours do we spend traveling (to and fro) in a day?
The answer should be within an hour BUT in reality, varies between 1 and 4 hours.

How many hours do we spend at work?
The answer should be 8 BUT it stretches anywhere between 10 and 14 hours.

Considering all the modest figures from the above, how many hours are we left with?
24hours a day (-) 7hours of sleep (-) 2.5hours of traveling (-) 10 hours of work.
We’re left with 4.5 hours in the day.

How much quality time would WE want to spend with our family?
The answer should be whatever possible BUT is restricted to just one meal a day OR a few spread out broken conversations here and there – most of it which is spent arguing over frivolous things. Let’s just put a number to this and let’s assume we spend a good one hour with the family.
Now we’re left with 3.5 hours in the day.

I would take away 60 minutes for the regular maintenance activities in a day, mandatory for regular human function. You know the brushing / bathing and the works.
We are now left with only 2.5 hours in our hand.

This is just an illustration.
Let’s do our own math and then revisit the newly defined necessities of the urban lifestyle. Do we really need them? Are they really necessities?

Whatever happened to going out with family/friends on weekends? I’m referring to seeing a new place or visiting friends or relatives. Not going to a mall or a cinema.
Whatever happened to reading books and enriching ourselves?

I’ve seen the generation who needed time to rest after a hard day’s work. Today we need time to exercise after parking our rears in different styles of cushion.

Today we blindly want more of everything.
What we don’t realize is that to afford those very things, we are sacrificing more of our time and energy. And what do we get?
We just possess things, whether or not we are able to use/consume them in the intended manner.

We seem to have certainly evolved.
From Bread, Thread and Roof-Spread
To Convertibles, Versace and Cheese Spread.