Editor’s note:
I believe our relationship with money is influenced by the circumstances we were born in. The place, yes. But more importantly, the time. India has evolved over the last forty years, and so has her populace. And nobody has experienced this precocious nature like the urban Indian corporate employee. The 80s and 90s were an era of caution, as we came to terms with making enough money to put in a savings account. The new millennium and the years that followed brought a certain element of financial literacy, and our appetite to spend improved, influenced by globalisation and the West’s relatively happy-go-lucky relationship with money. Today, the average white collar worker lives in an era of abundance. We’re okay taking risks, we’re okay spending a little more than we should, even if it means we risk becoming the modern day urban poor. Rohit Kaul explores this evolution through four acts, written from the point of view of a working Indian experiencing money for the first time in different eras. Where do you see yourself?

Act 1

You are 40.

You stroll into LICK — Lavonne Ice Cream Kitchen, the newest gastro craze in Bangalore’s startup strip.

A quiet runway for soft logos greets you. A tiny mountain embroidered on the chest. A backpack with emblazoned initials. Running shoes that promise speed even while standing still. No one flaunts; yet everything is visible.

You clutch your latest Pro Max a little tighter, almost as a reflex. You are a CXO. You are not unhappy with your salary. Your family lacks nothing essential, which feels like relief and responsibility at once.

You order tiramisu. Tap your card. A Green tick and a tiny twitch land together—it’s just a few hundred rupees, but the counter in your head is self-winding. This was a month’s phone bill, not too long ago—the reflex fires before the taste lands.

First bite. Smooth, coffee-forward. Nothing extraordinary. Is it even worth the price? The twitch remains.

You look at your card. Plain vanilla. Younger colleagues have platinums and Blacks. Same tap. Different signal? Is there a card that signals enough status? You make a mental note to ask for an upgrade. You will forget it by the end of this night, like hundreds of previous nights.

At the next table, someone scrolls through backpack reviews. You glance at yours. It works. You don’t need to upgrade. You could. Isn’t this enough? Enough for comfort? But is it enough? For brushing against the tiny mountains and designer initials?

Second bite. As good or bad as the first. The signage of California Burrito from across the road dances on your specs. You had Mont Blancs last year. They split into two. Now Lenskart. It’s good enough. Or is it? You twitch.

Chapter 1: Enough

Enough is not a number; it is a script. Those of us who were born well before the economic liberalization of 1991, including me, wrestle with a perpetual tension because we learned one script and now live inside another.

The script we learned

You were taught to be grateful for ‘enough.’ A stable job. A home loan you could finish. Money as a buffer, but not for broadcast. Resources were scarce, so restraint was a virtue. Display felt immodest. People who displayed wealth got it through unscrupulous means—you were taught. The Stock Market felt dangerous. The right posture was: save first, postpone pleasure, avoid attention.

The script we try to fit into

The modern chorus doesn’t sing, “Don’t you have enough?” It chants, “Why stop here?” Upgrades are progress. ‘Everything on EMI’ is a feature, not a bug. 24/7 signaling is the new default: from sneakerhead drops to coffee gear collections to mechanical keyboard builds to secret soirées. There's always another level to unlock, another unboxing, another flex. Everything is TikTok.

These two scripts collide at the payment terminal.

The ice cream scoop becomes a moral audit. Rs. 100 at Nirula's down the road—isn't that enough? But here you stand, about to pay Rs. 400 for artisanal gelato. This isn't about ice cream, or a backpack, or Harley. It's about whether contentment is a virtue or a cage. Whether wanting more makes you evolved or ungrateful. 

The old script whispers: "Be grateful for what you have." The new script counters: "You've earned the right to want better." You stand between them, card in hand, trying to decode which story you're telling yourself.

Act 2

You are ten. Just walked back from school.

The small TV with a white lace top cloth hums. Your parents and uncle from next door lean forward on the brown 2-seater sofa, accounts diary open between them.

You drop your canvas bag on the cemented floor. The brass Nataraja gathers dust in the wooden glass showcase that hasn't been opened in months. The PPF passbook lies thick with stamps—each stamp another "not now, beta." Your twice-resoled Bata shoes now pinch. Next year for sure, beta.

On the TV, a man in a blue turban says words like reforms and license raaj. You don't care.

Soon, Sachin drinks Lehar Pepsi on TV. But you only get it when guests come over. Your cousin returns from Dubai with a Walkman clipped to his belt. You get to listen to it for a minute before he snatches it. 

At your friend’s birthday, her mother breaks a Kit-Kat into pieces—one finger for each child. You only see this chocolate magic at birthday parties. Someone’s building got ‘cable.’ Then your does too. You watch MTV between school, tuitions, and homework, when parents are not looking.

The new world arrives in pieces, carefully rationed, like everything else.

Ch 2: Scarcity

Scarcity wasn't a concept we studied in Econ 101. It was the architecture of daily life. But it’s impossible to tell someone who hasn’t experienced it what scarcity feels like.

One phone, two floors, five families. The Sharmas on the ground floor became the receptionists. "Verma ji, phone!" echoed up the stairwell. You ran down in your chappals, spoke quickly. Long-distance calls happened by appointment—and were kept short, because the meter was running.

Every resource had multiple uses, multiple lives. Your school uniform had three previous owners whose names were inked out, one by one. All your sweaters and jackets were hand-me-downs. This wasn't deprivation. This was optimization.

The permanent mark of this scarcity isn't poverty—most of us escaped that. It's the reflexes that outlive their reason.

You still save gift wrap. Still dilute the handwash. Still feel guilty taking the last piece. Still hear your mother's voice when the fan runs in an empty room. At forty, with money in the bank, you still check restaurant bills right-to-left: price first, dish later, while your kids stare at you in amazement.

Sendhil Mullainathan calls it "bandwidth tax"—how scarcity hijacks mental space. But it's simpler than that. Scarcity is a language your body learned before you had words. That twitch at the payment terminal? That's not your wallet speaking. It's your ten-year-old self, watching your mother stretch your father’s salary till the end of every month, month on month, miraculously, learning that every rupee had to answer for itself.

Act 3

You are 30.

Croma, Ambience Mall, Gurgaon.

Saturday afternoon. Last year's iPhone in your pocket, this year's in your hand. The sales guy hovers, but you don't need his pitch. You know the specs. You've already decided.

"Cash or card?"

"Card."

"EMI available sir, zero cost—"

"Full payment."

He nods, differently—the receipt prints.

Outside, you unbox it in the car itself. No ceremony. Transfer the SIM. The old phone—still perfect, just older—goes in the glove box. Tonight it'll sit in some drawer with its predecessors: Nokia, BlackBerry, and the first iPhone that made you feel arrived.

A WhatsApp ping from a college friend: "Did you get it?”

“Yes”

“Awesome!”

"👍"

Salary hit yesterday. Two incomes, no kids, rent at 20% of income. Decisions are simple. No committee meetings with yourself. No mental gymnastics.

Your mother's voice still lives in your head—the one that counts notes twice. But right now it's like a smoke alarm in a house that's never seen fire. You hear it and override it. The buffer between you and worry is thick enough to muffle the old warnings.

Ch 3: Buffer

For the pre-liberalization child, "buffer" is a way of living. You watched that blue progress bar on RealPlayer inch forward before anything could play. Five minutes of buffering for two minutes of grainy video. Everything needed a buffer—a space to gather resources before action.

The financial buffer is no different: a psychological progress bar that has to fill before a purchase feels safe. Without it, every expense feels like a gamble, every purchase a risk. With it, your shoulders relax. You sleep better. You walk differently. It’s like a mental insurance cover you have taken for yourself.

And when you are thirty, the buffer feels so thick it is almost surreal. Your emergency fund could cover a year—your father never saw that kind of runway in his entire career. Bills get paid without mental math. SIPs run on autopilot. There's still money left at month-end. Don't be confused. This isn't wealth. In fact, far from it. But it's more cushion than three generations of your family have ever known.

The buffer felt even thicker because your consumption was almost private. There were no reels or TikTok to post unboxing shorts or haul reveals. The photos on your feed were actually from your friends’ vacation, and influencers were people with real influence. So, the math was clean: your money vs your needs. No algorithms prompting you to broadcast your lifestyle, no feeds demanding proof of progress. That quiet made the buffer feel infinite.

Act 4

You are 45.

Saturday, late evening. Your work desk. Laptop glow.

An iPad Pro sits in your cart. 512 GB. M4 processor. 11 inch of OLED glass pane with nano texture. The Apple Pencil adds another 15k. The configuration page has been open so long that your screen has dimmed twice. You've read every review, watched every comparison. "This could be the last device you'll need," they promise.

Other tabs tell a different story. School fee portal: next quarter due. Investment dashboard: SIP performance down 6%. LinkedIn: Another startup laying off. Gmail: Parents' insurance renewal. News website: "Average retirement corpus India 2025." Excel: Your runway calculator.

You've done the math both ways. It's not about affordability. It's about the runway. And at 45, the runway feels different.

You leave the cart open. Not a no. Not yet a yes. Just another quiet negotiation with time.

Ch 4: Runway

The runway math plays in your head on loop like Taylor Swift plays in your daughter's iPhone: fifteen years to sixty, maybe twenty to actual retirement. Two university educations to fund. Parents need more care. Your own medical bills are climbing. Each line item needs its own corpus, and the clock doesn't pause while you build them.

The freedom to switch jobs, to take risks, to start over—it seems to shrink with each passing year. Your peers are being "guided out" with three months' severance. The interviews have started ending with "we're looking for someone more younger."

The irony of the situation is not lost on you. You have more money in the bank than ever before. You eat at expensive restaurants. You take luxury vacations.

But runway isn't about what you have—it's about your confidence in your ability to keep generating it; confidence being the keyword here. Life's entropy means one surprise expense can crack the foundation. A parent's surgery, a job loss, a market crash. And unlike at thirty, your ability to earn it back has a ceiling now. The upside is capped.

You watch your younger colleagues with part amazement, part envy—they seem to have infinite runways and a world full of possibilities—decades to pivot, recover, rebuild.

And here's the thing: you don't know if this anxiety is wisdom or paranoia. Your generation is charting unknown territory—more money, less certainty. No playbooks. No clear map. Just a constant negotiation between abundance and the old scripts of scarcity. Some days it feels like insight. Some days it feels like fear. Most days, it's both.

Act 5

You are _____.

Late night. The movie plays on the TV in the living room. The kids are asleep in the next room. Your spouse is on a work call behind a half-closed door.

A trench between lines. Two soldiers glare, then bargain. A third lies still. Under his spine, a spring-loaded mine waits—he twitches and it’s the end.

Peace Corps arrives. Cameras, too. The trench becomes a set. A de-miner shakes his head. The mine can’t be disarmed. The radio says one thing; the television promises another. In the end, the convoy rolls away after announcing success. The man on the mine does not move.

The last image is quiet. An overhead shot. The soldier’s chest rises and falls. The world continues at full volume.

You watch the scene for what it is—not spectacle, but structure. A choice that isn’t a choice. Move and pay one price. Don’t move and pay another. The world around keeps its pace.

You think about smaller versions of the same metaphor in your life. The card tap that twitches. The open tab with a loaded cart, you don’t close. The way “later” feels like safety and like loss, both at once.

The credits roll. Your spouse’s call ends with a soft “goodnight.” You stand, check on the kids, and return to your workdesk.

The screen wakes to an open tab.

iPad Pro. 512 GB. M4 processor. 11 inch of OLED glass pane with nano texture.

You close the lid.

And feel the ever-familiar twitch run from your wrist to your heart.

PS: The title of the article is a straight lift from one of my all-time favorite movies. It’s in no way to indicate that these emotions are exhibited only by men. These are universal, to the best of my observations, across genders.