Problems of plenty

That's just silly. My first reaction to anyone who suggests that I pay $30 (approximately Rs. 1500) to go visit a haunted house. A place where fake ghosts and other scary spectres will pop out at one in varying ways and supposedly (in my case, quite likely) chill one to the bone. Why would anyone want to pay good money to scare oneself?

And surprisingly, as happens many a time, the answer might lie in part in one of my mother's observations. That people and cultures that do not have to fear or be anxious about day to day problems, create and embody abstract notions that they can be afraid of.

Something that fits very well into my list of the problems of plenty, the problems that besiege cultures that largely have a lack of 'want'. Cultures that do not need to worry about whether the electricity is going to go off or that they have to wake up at 4am every day to switch on the water pump or else no water that day. Cultures that can walk down aisle after aisle selling them a wide selection of breakfast cereal. Cultures of plenty.

To those cultures, paying good money to go see creepy fake spectres that scare them makes perfect sense. Incongruous at first glance. But perfectly real. When one does not have to worry about putting food on the table, one decides that the 'insert brand name here' bag that one saw on their last trip to the mall is a must-have. Irrespective of whether they own more bags than they will ever need or have an increasingly alarming figure on their credit card bill. An amount that the government should really step in to help them pay. I mean how can the banks be allowed to be such blood suckers.

Aah the problems of plenty. Somehow, I would any day opt for the water pump at 4am. At least that's real.