Go Kiss The World

Speech from Subroto Bachi
CEO of Mindtree

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home- schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep – so the family moved from place to place and, without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father. My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system which makes me what I am today and largely defines what success means to me today.


As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government – he reiterated to us that it was not `his jeep' but the government's jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep – we could sit in it only when it was stationary. That was our early childhood lesson in governance – a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father's office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix `dada' whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed – I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, `Raju Uncle' – very different from many of their friends who refer to their family drivers as `my driver'. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe. To me, the lesson was significant – you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother's chulha – an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was no gas, nor electrical stoves. The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman's `muffosil' edition – delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father tauht us a simple lesson. He used to say, "You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it". That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios – we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios – alluding to his five sons. We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply, "We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses". His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant. Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of w ell being through material possessions. Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father's transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, "I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited". That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life, I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading a nd in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper – end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness. Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term "Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan" and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University's water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination. Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

Over the next few years, my mother's eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, "Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair". I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, "No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed". Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes. To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light. Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life's own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life's calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places – I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world. In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him – he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under- resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, "Why have you not gone home yet?" Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self. There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what is the limit of inclusion you can create. My father died the next day.

He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts – the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant's world. My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions. In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking. Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said, "Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world." Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity – was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and Godspeed. Go, kiss the world. Life is all about timing... the unreachable becomes reachable, the unavailable become available, the unattainable... attainable. Have the patience, wait it out It's all about timing.

Thanks to Mahendra for sending this inspiring article.

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Don't let the cups drive YOU!!! Enjoy the COFFEE instead!!!

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's cups. "Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it."

So folks, don't let the cups drive you..., enjoy the coffee instead.
GOOD is not GOOD where BETTER is EXPECTED and the BEST is POSSIBLE!!!!!
Thanks to Sri Ram for sending me this article

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Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish
Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered at Stanford University on June 12, 2005

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.

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Whether to marry Home Min or Fin Min?

The Economic Times Online
Printed from economictimes.indiatimes.com > ET Personal
Whether to marry Home Min or Fin Min?
BARUN JHA & SMITA NANDA

INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, DECEMBER 06, 2005 01:39:48 AM]
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DINK (Double Income No Kids) is the buzzword when it comes to new-age family formats. Kids or not, the unwritten thumb rule for both the spouses is to contribute to the family kitty for meeting the ever-expanding household financial needs. But does this mean that in today's world it is impossible to make both ends meet unless both the partners are working? There are quite a few factors, however, that work against a clear-cut conclusion that earning wives make more financial sense than non-earning housewives.


Both the earning and non-earning wives bring a different set of expenses to the household budget, and the actual contribution of the two can vary depending on various factors such as total household income, ages, job profiles, work experience, lifestyles, societal status and the emotional compatibility.

Here, we will discuss two set of couples each in three different income groups for a comparative analysis --. the husband being the sole contributor to the family kitty in the first set and both the partners earning in the second set. Also, we have tried to keep the household expenses have been confined to those heads that vary between the different sets of couples discussed here.

Another point to note is that here we have talked about modern couples where the male partners do not have an identity crisis every time their wives start going to work.


Take one – The beginners

Rajeev, technical support associate with an IT start-up IT, and Sneha, a front-desk executive in an MBA coaching institute, are both in their mid-20s and have been married since the past six months. Both are working since the past couple of years and their combined income comr to around Rs 25,000 per month, or Rs 3 lakh per annum.

Rajeev's colleague, Sunil, belongs to the same age group and his salary is also similar. However, Sunil's wife Sunita is a housewife, which brings their total household income at around Rs 15,000 per month, or Rs 1.8 lakh per annum.

At first glance, Rajeev and Sneha seem to be leading by more than Rs 1 lakh over the Sunil-Sunita household. However, Rajeev says that his bank balance remains the same as Sunil's at the end of the month. Both Rajeev and Sunil spend an equal amount on their individual clothes, accessories, conveyance and various work-related expenses. However, while Rajeev relies most often on the office canteen for his lunch, Sunil always brings food from home. Besides, Sneha also eats her lunch in the office canteen, while Sunita cooks it at home for both herself and Sunil. For dinner also, Rajeev and Sneha quite often rely on pizza home delivery or takeaways due to time constraints.

Sneha says that she needs to buy a new dress almost every second month, as she wants to have a variety in her office wears. Accessories, such as bags and purses, cosmetics, expensive women's and fashion magazines such as Femina and Gladrgs, and beauty parlour-visits also grab a good chunk of Sneha's overall expenses.

In contrast, Sunita's wardrobe consists of mostly cotton suits and sarees that she wears mostly at home. She has a good collection of some costlier dresses that she wears to parties, shopping trips and her other outside ventures. However, these occasions are rare as Sunil finds time only on weekends and even on off-days he would prefer to take some rest. Therefore Sunita's wardrobe still contains quite some dresses that she has not used more than once and therefore there are limited chances of any further additions in the near future. Sunita's expenses on accessories and beauty parlours are also much lower compared to Sneha.


Rajeev and Sneha say that they always try to catch the latest movies and dine in a good restaurant on weekends, as these are the only means of entertainment and some quality time spent together. Then, the two have their own set of office parties, get-togethers, trips, official meetings lunches etc and individual expenses associated with them. The two also spend separately on conveyance to their respective offices – while Rajeev drives his motorcycle, Sneha takes an autorickshaw. And then, the family runs into a huge phone bill at the end of the month, as both needs to keep separate mobile phones besides one landline phone at their home.

However, Sunita outscores Sneha when it comes to the number of magazine subscriptions. The overall utility bills at the Sunil-Sunita household are also much bigger than that of Rajeev and Sneha. Sunita watches quite some time in front of TV and regularly hosts kitty parties and other neighbour get-togethers at her house. Sunil says that Sunita regularly asks for some latest audio CDs and DVDs as she feels bored alone at home. Relatives and other friends are also more frequent at the Sunil-Sunita household, as compared to that of Rajeev and Sneha as the two are at home only at nights. Lately, Sunita has also developed a habit for frequenting the neighbourhood temple and also spends on pooja and other religious events both at home and in the temple.

Rajeev and Sneha have also started worrying about further rise in their household expenses once they decided to have a child. They will need to go for a crèche and/or a full-time maid in the initial years, as Sneha will not be able to get a maternity leave of more than four months. Once their kid is ready to go to school, they plan to send him/her to a boarding school, as they cannot ensure the required care for the child here at home.

Rajeev and Sneha concede that they are not any better than Sunil and Sunita in financial terms at the end of a month. Moreover, they envy Sunil and Sunita as they themselves do not have any time for kids or each other. Although as a saving grace Rajeev and Sneha definitely enjoy a better lifestyle.

Now take your pick – Do you want better lifestyle or more quality time together?


Take two – The professionals

Nikhil and Pooja are in their early-30s and can be considered as Rajeev and Sneha a few years down the lane. Nikhil, a technical writer with an e-learning software firm, is working for more than five years, while Pooja is working as a content editor in a BPO since the last three years. The two have been married over the last three years and have a 2-year girl child Ananya. Nikhil and Pooja are pooling in Rs 40,000 per month as the total household income.

Akash and Alka live in the same apartment as that of Nikhil and Pooja. Akash is a software programmer working in the IT sector for past six years, but Alka stopped working after marriage, as both of them decided that Akash's individual income, that is Rs 25,000 per month, was enough to meet their household expenses. However, the two regret the decision some times, when they see that couples like Nikhil and Pooja are much better off financially.

Similar to the first set of couples, Nikhil and Pooja spend more on individual clothes, accessories, conveyance, mobile phones, kids and lunch breaks, as compared to Akash and Alka. In addition, the collective household expenses of Nikhil and Pooja are also more than Akash and Alka's, as they also include more spending on foods with all the eating-outs takeaways and home deliveries, entertainment and weekend outings, holidays etc.

However, when compared to Rajeev and Sneha the double-income couple of the first set, the expenses are not much larger in the Nikhil-Pooja household. The additional expenses as for Nikhil and Pooja are limited to the visits to gyms/fitness clubs to match their societal status, relatively bigger brands for apparel, accessories, restaurants and other household items etc. However, the difference in the total income of the two couples more than makes up for these extra expenses.

The rise in expenses, however, for Akash and Alka is much bigger, when compared to the solo-earner couple of the first set, Sunil and Sunita. As Akash belongs to the same societal strata as that of Nikhil, his individual expenses are similar. Besides, as Akash and Alka live in the same apartment as that of Nikhil and Pooja, Alka's circle of neighbourhood friends mostly consist of wives of good-earning husbands. Alka's expenses are much larger than that of Sunita, in terms of kitty parties, temples/religious functions, jewellery, costlier sarees/suits and home entertainment. Alka also loves to go on rapid shopping trips with her friends. Also, being a good cook, while Alka certainly saves a lot by giving home-cooked food to her husband for lunch, more often than not, she splurges on exotic items and one can always be sure of a well-laden table filled with a variety of food items at her home.


Since the past few months, Alka has also started taking active part in an NGO to utilise her free time. While this hobby is winning good accolade for Alka, this is also making a dent in her household budget.

Akash and Alka say that they still manage to save some money for their future and kids with some good investment and money management decisions. However, they concede that couples such as Nikhil and Pooja where husband's income is equal to that of Akash's, are financially better off than themselves. On winning side, Akash and Alka outscore Nikhil and Pooja on the emotional quotient front, as the two enjoy more quality time together and with their son Aman. However, Nikhil and Pooja are also satisfied with whatever time they get for each other and for their daughter Ananya.

The high-fliers

This set contains two couples who rank well above the four couples discussed so far in income and ewxperience. Abhay and Shelly are working for over 10 years now and their combined income ranges between Rs 65,000 and Rs 80,000 per month, depending on their stock market pickings. While Abhay holds a senior managerial position with a garment export firm, Shelly is secretary to CEO at a mid-rung software company. Their daughter Piya is studying in 8 th standard at a boarding school in Ranikhet.

Arun is a software developer in the same office where Shelly works and hos income is between Rs 35,000 and Rs 40,000. Arun's wife Sunanda used to work as a career counselor earlier but had left her job after giving birth to their daughter Sonya. Both the couples are in the age group of mid-to-late 30s and both the households also count on returns from their stock market investments, besides their salary incomes.

While the household incomes of both these couples are much larger than the previous four couples, the household expenses, both individual and collective, also outscore considerably over those of the previous couples discussed here. In case of Abhay and Shelly, costs of basic items such as apparel, accessories, fuel bills, utility bills etc get much higher compared to those of couples from previous two sets. However, the difference is minimal when comparing Abhay-Shelly and Arun-Sunanda households.


Abhay-Shelly and Arun-Sunanda are even more brand-conscious and also go for designer labels occasionally, as compared to their lower income group brethren. For example, while the first set of couples go for Rupa and VIP brands of undergarments, the second set prefers Jockey and Lovables and the third set opts for brands like Marks & Spencer. Similarly, while the first two couples are comfortable with their entry-level mobile phones, the second set carries mid-range camera and MMS-enabled phones and the third set of couples have high-end smart phones in their hands. The personal accessories of the third set of couples also income high-tech gadgets such as iPods.

In the Arun-Sunanda household, where Sunanda is not earning, the wife becomes more of a spendthrift and often engages into impulsive buying during her frequent shopping trips. Also the jewellery advances to diamond and platinum, as compared to gold and silver in the case of previous two sets of couples. The beauty parlours that Sunanda frequents are also costlier than that of other women we have discussed so far. While, Shelly, who is also earning, does not visit beauty parlours so often, she makes it up with her visits to expensive gyms and fitness clubs. Both Abhay and Arun are also more conscious about their fitness, compared to their counterparts in the lower income groups.

The fuel and utility bills for Abhay-Shelly and Arun-Sunanda households are also much larger as both the couples drive their own cars and their household appliances include high power-consuming gadgets such as plasma TV and full-automatic home theatre systems. The two couples also keep full-time servants at their homes, although they do not need maids to take care of their children who are studying in boarding schools.

While Abhay, Shelly and Arun are quite frequent in their business meetings in clubs, pubs and five-star hotels, Sunanda has her own set of friends with whom she frequents the clubs. As compared to kitty parties of other non-working wives in our study, Sunanda goes to five-star parties. Sunanda is also to a great extend attracted towards social service and is member of a big NGO and quite often makes large donations for various causes, which are much larger than the donations to temples and for other smaller events done by Sunita and Alka, the other two non-earning wives. In fact, Abhay, Shelly, Arun and Sunanda all four can be termed as wannabe socialites or party animals.

On a comparative basis, both Abhay-Shelly and Arun-Sunanda households are much better placed financially, when compared to the other four couples, thanks to their larger income. Between the two, Abhay-Shelly and Arun-Sunanda fare almost equal in financial terms. In terms of lifestyle too, both the couples are nearly on same footing, but definitely score much better than the other four. But, the emotional quotient, including the time spent together, is not any better in case of both Arun- Sunanda and Abhay-Shelly and both the couples fare miserably when compared to the previous four couples.


In a nutshell

We will gauge all the six couples on three scales of money position, lifestyle/status and quality time spent together. On a scale of 1-3 from bad to very good, Rajeev and Sneha score 1 on money front, 2 on lifestyle and 1 one on emotional front, which brings their total score to 4. In comparison, Sunil and Sunita who belong to same set but wife is not earning, the scores are 1, 1 and 3 respectively and their total score is 5. Hence, a non-earning wife becomes a better proposition in this set.

In the second set, Nikhil and Pooja, where both are earning, score 2 on money front, 2 on lifestyle and 2 on emotional front, and their total score is six. The second couple Akash and Alka score 2 on money front, 1 on lifestyle front and 3 on emotional front, which brings their total score to six again. Though the second couple is better off in emotional front, in lifestyle stakes the first couple come out winners. The result: a draw.

For the third set of couples, Abhay and Shelly score 2 on money front, 3 one lifestyle and 1 on emotional front. The second couple in this group, Arun and Sunanda score 2 on money front, 3 on lifestyle and 1 on the emotional front. The both-earning couple scores a total of six in this set, while one-earning couple makes a total score of six as well. Again a draw. Therefore it does not really matter in this group whether the wife works or not.

On first glance one would consider that the last set of couples should strike a high of eight or nine when it comes to the total score, given their huge total household income. However, a comparative study of all the six couples reveals that Sunil and Sunita, and to some extend Nikhil and Pooja, are the best positioned to reach a break-even point in terms of financial strength, lifestyle and emotional quotient all.

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