The Hindu Business Line : The denial of desire

After his roti-kapda aur makaan requirements have been satisfied, the first thing that the arriviste Indian will stock up on are diamonds, and then cars.

Do you want a toy engine or do you want an ice-cream? Asked the Mother staring at her five-year-old in the middle of a crowded shopping mall. He was emitting piercing shrieks. He was about to fling himself on the ground and drum his feet on the floor. He was after all making a perfectly reasonable request he wanted both the engine and the ice-cream. As a member of the `Dil Mange More' generation the little boy was just exercising his right to have it all. It was his mother who was making life intolerable for him and for all of us around by asking him to choose. For a budding initiate of the revolution of endless gratification he had come slam-bang against a wall, the freedom to choose. "Either you can buy a toy here on the first floor, or we can go up on the fourth floor and have an ice-cream."

Choices. Choices. Choices. By denying him the objects of his desire, the mother had just made them just that much more attractive. It was imperative for the boy to get both the engine and the ice-cream. At a different level this is the battle going on through the collective mind of the India consumer. After years of feeling deprived that all the famous global brands that existed in some `Never Never Land' of shopping malls that were just one air-ticket away in Singapore, Hong-Kong, or Dubai. Remember the intense pleasure of shopping in all those neon-tinted, electronically wired, plastic money paradises that used to lure Indians to those carnivals of consumer excess. We now find that the very same goods are finally on our doorstep. This has, however, created a new kind of anxiety. It's no longer fun to shop because the very same brands that were so desirable are now at the reach of every other person. A Levi is now just another pair of jeans, not the hot label that it once used to be. Instead of enjoying the idea of unlimited choice, there is now an elite that likes to tell you that they never shop. It's called the `denial of desire'.

"I never buy anything," confessed the scion to a famous film making empire. "I don't have any needs. I never go shopping. Sometimes my wife will notice that the shirt that I am wearing is nearly falling to pieces and she will go out and buy one for me, but I never feel the need to get anything for myself."

He explained that he did not like to party. He travelled abroad only on work. He definitely had no interest in collecting any crystal, cars and god forbid, the very thought, women, which are after all the traditional areas of interest amongst Indians who have arrived to those positions of power and influence that used to be dominated by the Maharajas. He lived, he said, a perfectly boring life, diverting some of his wealth to various good causes. Of course, one could argue that by using others as proxy shoppers, his wife for instance, he was getting what he wanted anyway. He does, however, represent a certain kind of person who by refusing to play the game creates a new set of rules whereby not having something is the desirable alternative to having everything.

It could be called the Nizam's conundrum.

What do you do after you have everything in the world? Diamonds, horses, harems, palaces, a fleet of cars, silver plates to cater to a thousand people at a time, small mountains of fresh water pearls, forests of emeralds, the world's record in the most exquisite collection of peshkashes those ornaments that Nawabi types would clip into their turbans, carpets from Persia, damascened swords from Damascus, porcelain jars tall enough to hide a grown man from China, clocks from the watch-makers of Europe, chandeliers from Belgium? In fairy-tales, that are meant to hold a moral, the answer would be the song of a nightingale, the fragrance of a perfect rose, perhaps, the smell of new earth after a night of rain. In the real world it might be a very good tax consultant. In the most extreme case, as in the strange history of the millionaire recluse Howard Hughes, it took the form of living a life of such complete isolation that no one knew what he looked like anymore and his only desire was reduced to a particular flavour of ice-cream that had to be manufactured for him, specially in industrial size quantities when he realised that the company had stopped making the particular combination.

As for Elvis, who can forget that he died sitting on his potty, straining so hard to have a go, he managed to stop his heart. It could be a case of death by anal arrest. He too was a millionaire who lived his last years eating junk food. The greatest luxury these persons could imagine for themselves was the luxury of being alone, denying themselves all the very same desires that they had lived and worked for: endless encounters with women, fabulous houses, the food of their dreams in unlimited quantities.

Notice for instance how some of these needs have remained constant through the ages and through different cultures. After his roti-kapda aur makaan requirements have been satisfied, the first thing that the arriviste Indian will stock up on, are the diamonds, the cars, the discreet but diverting sex interest, (nowadays flaunting a companion of either sex is considered quite chic) tucked away somewhere in a well-appointed apartment, or farm-house, and a conspicuously arranged miniature museum of precious objects that are fondly displayed as `My Special Collection' of cats, owls, antique ear cleaners and in a sizeable number of cases a passion for Indian erotica, that are brought out for the appreciation of a very select inner circle.

The Nizam himself found a unique solution. He lived his life in denial. He was both the richest man in the world of his day and also the most notorious of misers. He is alleged to have worn the same threadbare sherwani, until it would hang in tatters around his shoulders.

He forgot where he had hidden the famous Jacob's diamond because he had tossed it one day into the curving recesses of one of his old shoes and he was so obsessed at the idea of not spending money to repair all his many properties, that a person who once had to go and repair some of the loos in the royal harem came back in horror. "They were the most medieval of places, mere holes in the ground that had not been attended to in decades," he recalls. "Even though all the ladies of the harem had to use them." Was this a case of royal anally retentive behaviour?

Or could it just be that from the Buddha onwards, there has been a vein of self-denial that runs through our view of the world? The very opposite of the rags to riches stories, we tend to be reverse snobs.

We celebrate the `Maharaja to Mendicant' route to self-gratification in theory, as we follow each new messiah who preaches to us about the material desires, the virtues of non-attachment to worldly goods.

What makes such pronouncements so very instructive is that these messiahs of non-attachment are themselves surrounded by images of wealth, the Mercedes Benzes, the silken robes, diamond studded watches, the flunkies who flutter around them using the latest in communication technology and devotees with unlimited access to money. For these realised beings and their devoted followers the process has been reversed as they have gone from mendicant to maharaja.

It's just a question of the dil having its reasons that your desires know nothing about.

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