[DAY 40 OF THE DEEP END PROJECT]
Rich.
Did you scrunch up your nose at that word?
I don’t blame you.
I did too.
For the longest time, Rich to me meant MORE.
Someone with more money or more stuff than me.
Shelly (name changed) was rich.
Shelly was my best friend at school. We were joined at the hip from Elementary to High School
My ride or die. She was like my sister.
And she was Rich.
Fancy cars. Big home. Expensive school bag, a lunch box that opened at the push of a button
Perfumed pencils and erasers.
Even her talcum powder was rich!
It made your skin cool as soon as you apply it. She let me try it once.
In Delhi heat where temperatures go above 103 degrees with a 95% humidity and no matter what you do, you can’t stop sweating, this was worth killing someone for.
I was borderline obsessed with it. I remember I told my entire family about the magic talcum powder in that bottle!!
“It makes your skin cool mummy! Her dad got it for her from America!”
Even her clothes were branded and expensive .
Everything about her was rich. Including her skin. It was creamy and glowed all the time.
And me?
We weren’t rich, but we weren’t poor either.
We were middle class.
A small car, a comfortable house.
My clothes were nice but didn’t have a label on them.
We ate at somewhat expensive restaurants, took fancy vacations and lived in nice, good and comfortable hotels.
We had everything we needed. Always enough.
More than most. But less than few.
But my talcum powder? It didn’t cool my skin when I squirted it on my underarms.
It didn’t make my skin hot either.
It was talcum powder. It did what talcum powders are supposed to do?
What are talcum powder supposed to do anyway?
I digress, but I think you get the point. I wasn’t rich. I wasn’t poor. I was basic.
But Shelly, my best friend, was rich and I was proud to be her friend.
She never made me feel poor. Or less than. Oh no!
She loved me.
I was her best friend and she was mine. I never felt the lack of a technologically advanced pencil box and magical talcum powder, when I was with her.
Sometimes, only sometimes I sensed her change just a little when we had more “shellys” around us.
Girls with expensive clothes and cooling talcum powders.
“You won’t get it Deepshikha, it’s a brand” they would giggle together.
They weren’t wrong. I had no idea what Zara was at the time. I had never heard of it or seen it in the local market we used to buy our clothes from.
But clearly it was something way out of my league.
“Rich means more. More stuff. More branded, cool, expensive looking stuff”
Got it!
My brain attached meaning to this definition for the next decade or so.
And then I grew up, got married, moved continents & had babies.
One day I was walking the aisles of an Organic aka obnoxiously expensive Pharmacy with my toddler. I had run out of diaper cream and he had the beginnings of a rash (every mom’s nightmare)
As I walked the aisles, looking for the brand all moms seemed to love, my eyes locked on a familiar product.
The same Talcum Powder that Shelly used and I obsessed over.
It was the middle of January with snow on the ground and bone chilling temps, so the thought of the Talcum Powder on my skin made me shiver right on the spot.
But for a few seconds, I stood there staring at it. I took it in my hands. It looked exactly the same as I remembered it.
A bottle for $3.99.
‘I could buy 100 of this right now. If I wanted’
15 years ago, I was obsessed with it.
I would’ve done anything to possess it. And oh my god, how rich would I have felt!! Just like Shelly and the other girls.
But as I stood before it, knowing fully that I could buy 100 of these or thousands and it would still not make me feel happier or give me the same thrill it did back then, my paradigm towards the definition of RICH changed completely.
What does Rich mean to me?
Money? Yes. I love money.
But Money is not my driver. Money is a vehicle. That’s all. A vehicle to be able to live a good life and enable it for others.
This was sealed for me last year when my birth country India was dying with escalating deaths because of COVID.
I couldn’t be there on the ground, but I could use my money to help my country and my near and dear ones.
So yes I do love money and I require money, infinite amounts of money to live a good life. Yes, I said Infinite.
What else does Rich mean to me?
A deep knowing in my own value, beauty and worthiness
A Goddess level confidence and magnetism
Access to my witch like magic powers aka the lady intuition
Being Unapologetically myself
An icing on the cake would be to have a circle of other Rich Ladies holding hands so that we can love, laugh, cry, heal & reclaim our power because we all know there’s nothing more dangerous than powerful women coming together.
That’s a Rich life to me. I correct myself, that’s a Rich Lady Life to me
No, I didn’t buy the talcum powder.
Instead I started my own god damn business.