Tell me how to spend Rs 32 a day?

Over the past few weeks there has been a lot of talk among the chatteratti, the glitterati and the Fourth Estate, not to mention armchairs critics and harbingers of India’s future status, about the much quoted figure of Rs 32. A person who earns below this amount a day is considered living below the poverty line and most of the chatter is about how totally degrading and presumptuous this figure actually is. People are freely questioning the mental stability of the brains behind this figure. To many it is sacrilegious to even consider thinking about such a figure, let alone expecting people to take it for whatever it is worth and to base India’s future policies based on it. Many have tried to provide a break-up, albeit in a tongue in cheek fashion, of how this could be an amount a person can easily live off, every day.

Given that most of India lives in the villages and the avenues for conspicuous consumption are relatively non existent, I do not find this figure to be particularly revolting. I have tried to draw an analogy with one of the few things I profess to know about ... living off the grid. Consequently I have been trying not so much to try and live with less than Rs 32 a day, but trying to figure out ways and means of spending Rs 32 a day. Allow me to explain myself.

Living off the grid means that you are not dependent on the amenities and luxuries of the city. There are no electricity bills to pay, no gas to put in the tank, no LPG cylinder to cook your food. What does a person need not just to survive, but to live a relatively healthy and peaceful life? Three square meals a day, a roof over the head and clothes for vanity. OK, now to draw examples from living off the grid.

Let us take a roof over the head first. When one is living off the grid, one can devise a roof over the head using the materials Nature provides. All one needs is some logs, some branches, some leaves and some other natural vegetative debris that is always in abundance on the forest floor. Pine needles for a mattress, leaves for waterproofing and nice thick logs for protection. So shelter is done.

We come to three square meals a day. Actually one can learn to live on less than three squares a day, but let’s leave that debate aside for later. We eat too much in any case and all of us could do with a bit of moderation as far as food is concerned. Be that as it may, let us still look at three square meals a day. Nature provides for it in plenty. There are fruits on the trees, rice and wheat that you can grow, and animal protein in plenty. In the city we have conditioned ourselves to be right at the top of the food chain. In a self reliant situation, we are a part of the food chain. I am yet to meet or hear of a person ... or indeed any member of the animal kingdom ... who kills more than what is absolutely necessary to provide for the herd and family. This has been true ever since Plant Earth was inhabited by living creatures. It is we humans who like to stock up way more than what we require. There is food in plenty and no one in the wilderness need go hungry unless they are either infirm or old, therefore not fit enough to provide for himself or herself.

Along with food comes water. The human body comprises of two thirds part fluid and we cannot survive for more than a couple of days without water. As long as you are living off the grid with a water source close by and a means of making it potable, you are good to go. In fact, our bodies have become so immune to natural remedies that we cannot even think of ingesting even one drop of contaminated water. Over generations, and with increasing civilisation, we have tuned our bodies to be dependent of external healing. The natural process of healing has almost entirely been eroded.

That leaves clothes, the third pole of the Necessity Trinity. We need clothes to protect our privacy, to hide our shame, to prevent people from measuring lengths and cup sizes. But out there, living off the grid, who gives a flying f***. Even so, clothes are there to be tailored from animal skin. After all humans have worn animal skin clothes since the time of the first Neanderthals. Personally, clothes can be a bit of a luxury.

So, come to think of it, we do not really need a fancy house with a four car garage. We can do without the branded clothes, the fancy footwear and glittering eye glasses. And the jungle provides a four course gourmet meal if we are agreeable to becoming hunters, gatherers and chefs rolled into one.

Sure it will be difficult. But we can make life a lot easier by carrying our tents, our knives, our machetes, our fire starters, and a whole lot of stuff to help us do the things that need to be done in the jungle. But the tent will shred in time, the knives will blunt, the fire starters will get lost or outlive its utility. Then we are on our own. Hopefully by the time such a situation arises, one would have learned to make stone knives, stone tools, starting a fire by rubbing branches together and eating of a nice big flat piece of rock, which also acts as the hot plate on the camp fire.

After all this penning of thoughts, I am still not clear as to how I would manage to spend the allotted Rs 32 a day. OK, I will buy some seeds to grow my paddy and my rice and my potatoes. But after the first harvest I do not need to buy seeds either. If I can manage to live off the grid in an unfrequented area, not destroyed by previous agriculture, I will not need any fertilisers either for the farm. I would not need to rush to the store to pick up stuff. How do I spend Rs 32 a day living off the grid, pray tell.

And for those who say that one aspect I have entirely overlooked is educating the children, I have only one thing to say. I would rather have my children living off the land and respecting all living things, not destroying the environment by using a whole lot of polluting gadgets, not waste their time in frivolous and addictive activities like Facebook and email and blogging, they will grow up just fine. They will not crib about the air conditioner being on the blink or the rising price of oil. They will wonder why anyone would even consider bringing ‘democracy’ to a place that as a civilisation is thousands of years older than their own. All they need is an education is on frugality and in respect, for fellow living things, the environment and the planet we call home.

Someone do enlighten me on how to spend Rs 32 a day, every day. I will be obliged.