(In a lighter vein)

By Vincent Van Ross

If you don’t have at least a couple of loans running, it means there is something wrong with you! It means you are not in tune with the times. It means that you are not leading as comfortable or as luxurious a life as your neighbor. It means you are not living life king size!

What the devil? Don’t you remember the Onida ad? Neighbour’s envy…Owner’s pride! That is how it ought to be. You must have everything your neighbour has and maybe even more.

You must enjoy the luxuries of life…even those that you cannot afford at this point of time. That is what brings you the ultimate satisfaction in life! If you don’t have the money, you don’t have to beg or steal. You can easily borrow whatever you need.

If you want to buy the best LCD television, just call up a bank. They would gladly send their executives over and ensure that you get the loan money sooner than you expected! After all, they are sitting on so much of public deposits. If they don’t lend all that how can they earn their profit?

The best LCD television could cost you upwards of rupees three lakhs. Better take a loan and get it right away. If you think you can save up that kind of money before you decide to buy an LCD TV, just forget it. It would become outdated by the time you have enough money to buy it and something else would have replaced it. And, by the time you save up enough money to buy that, you would find that, that too has become outdated.

The first loan is all it takes to initiate you into the loan market. With that you arrive in the loan market with bang. Your data gets circulated in the entire market. The entire market gets to know that you are someone who needs loans!

You would start receiving e-mails, SMSes, telephone calls and calls on your mobile phone, when you are desperately trying to wade through the maze of rush hour traffic in the morning or evening, offering you loans.

Day in and day out you would get calls from girls with cute names and melodious voices seeking your permission to speak with you for a couple of minutes. If you fall for them, they will sell you a loan!

Likewise, you could pick up a loan to buy an imposing bungalow or a high-end car. Look at the power and the prestige these status symbols could bring you. Soon you would be moving around in Page 3 circles. Man, that’s life! The intoxication of splurging borrowed money is beyond words.

Take all the loans while you can because after sometime nobody would give you a loan! When they discover that you are already paying half-a-dozen EMIs to banks and financial institutions, they would start cold shouldering you. How would they know that? Well, they know how to read your bank statements if nothing else!

It is always like that. First they come after you. And, you would tell them that you are not looking for a loan. After a few years, you would be running after them and they would tell you that they cannot lend you any more money!

You would also learn a few economic terms such as ‘Debt Trap’ along the way! At first you borrow money to buy things. Then, you start paying back what you have borrowed along with the interest in installments.

That puts a squeeze on your spending power. To take care of that, you borrow more money to sustain your spending power and also to pay back the earlier loans. It becomes a ‘vicious circle.’ Now, that is another economic term for you!

Then you realize that half the loans that are running were not taken to purchase anything but to repay the loans you took earlier. That’s a fine mess. And, most borrowers get into this mess one way or the other.

One fine morning, you may be woken up by a noisy conversation outside your home. You peep out of the window and find four goons gossiping at your doorstep. You don’t want to get into trouble so you try to go back to sleep. But, when you overhear them talking of the EMIs that you have failed to pay, it dawns on you that they are not just gossiping. That puts the fear of God in you and you organize that money and pay up the outstanding installments the very next day!

One day, while your girlfriend is sitting next to you in that luxury car, four goons stop your car and ask you to get out. You think they are trying to waylay you and you want to put up a brave fight to impress your girlfriend. But, the moment you realize that they are not goons but very dignified employees of your bank called “Recovery Officers,” you withdraw yourself and try to strike a compromise to save your face in front of your girlfriend!

Some of these actions have been banned by courts but the banks are as imaginative about their recovery tactics as you are with picking up loans!

By the time you realize how difficult it is to run your life on loan, it is too late to do anything. Some debt traps lead to suicide trails. It is not worth it.

Just lead a simple life. Don’t crave after things. Buy only those things that you can afford to buy. Don’t even bother about what your neighbour owns. Just keep your life straight and simple. Lead a contented life with whatever you have.

For heaven’s sake, don’t put your life on loan. Because, once you are there, it becomes a 24X7 job to figure out how to pay your next installment day after day, month after month and year after year.

You have to keep track of every EMI and ensure that you do not default on any of it. In the blunder-land of loans one of the things that you realize is that if it is a five year loan, most of what you pay during the first two years go against the interest on loan.

If you are stupid enough to top up your loan after two years, you are starting all over again. That would mean that what you pay during the next two years would again come to naught!

Believe me! There is no fun in living your life on loan. It sounds nice when someone says ‘buy now pay later.’ What it actually means is buy at pleasure repent at leisure.

If somebody asks me whether I would like to live my life on loan, my answer would be an emphatic “No.” Once a borrower, always a borrower. I would do anything to keep me away from a life on loan!