What will you do if you find a 50 paise coin on the road? Nothing, right? Alright. What about a 1 or 5 rupee coin? Or a 10 rupee note? How about a 100? Needless to say, most of us will grab the money and walk away, grinning foolishly. What do you think Bill Gates would do? Assuming it takes 3 seconds to bend down, pick up the money, and stand up straight again. Well, according to point no. 4 in this article, Bill Gates makes $114.67 per second. That’s 114.67*60= Rs. 6880. In a second. And there are 86,400 seconds in a day. And, also, that article was almost a year old, so that number has to be adjusted for inflation. Also, I make a little more than 3 lacs p.a. So it takes Bill Gates almost 45 seconds to make how much I do IN A YEAR. YES. THAT’S HOW CRAZILY, INSANELY, AWESOMELY, DEPRESSINGLY, SELF-ESTEEM-SHATTERINGLY RICH BILL GATES IS.
So why am I harping on about Bill Gates on this lovely Saturday afternoon? That’s because I only just saw this video in which Neil deGrasse Tyson uses basic Math to explain exactly how rich Bill Gates is to all the muggles in the audience:
Billion. Buh-illion. With a B. 50 of those. With nine effing zeroes.
And this reminded me of my post (Look Ma, No IIT Background!) where I was harping on about another rich guy- Satya Nadella- also of the Microsoft fraternity, and about how his salary was a 100 crores; I basically brushed the little trivia off in a pretentious I-don’t-really-care-about-money-who-is-Satya-Nadella-really-come-on manner, and forgot all about it till I came across this funny/sad video.
So to sum up my babbling in two words: Fuck complacency. Fuck leading a small, tranquil life with the ones you love. Why should one person alone be allowed to be worth $50 billion dollars? Screw you, Mr. Gates. Where’s my money? Where’s yours? It’s out there. Somewhere. Going round and round in the world. So go out, work your ass off, and get those billion dollars. Easier said than done, yes, but you know what’s easier? Doing nothing about it. Anyhoo. I was never very good at pep talk or inspirational speeches. So all I can say is: Don’t be happy with what you have. Screw that. Work, work, work. You may not make a billion dollars, but hey, a billion-adjacent isn’t bad either, right? Definitely beats only dreaming about it.
Pipe Dreams 