How foolish is it to want 'old fools' to provide?

Recently, a friend of mine met one of his daughter’s classmates, a 26-year-old man, at one of the capital’s tony clubs after his morning round of golf and while sipping on a beer. My friend was surprised to find the young man, who had graduated from an elite school in Delhi and finished higher studies in the US, now back living in the heart of Delhi with his parents – that, too, free to play golf and have a leisurely lunch on a weekday. Not wanting to take the bull by its horns, my friend asked him what he was doing with his life these days. Nothing too probing, just a mild, polite query.

The young man said that his father’s business was large, had recently gone public, and he spent a few hours three days a week at his office, getting the hang of it all -while he spent four days at the club, pursuing his passions. Jokingly, and a trifle jarringly, he added that he didn’t need to really work since ‘the old fool is providing’. He added, much to my friend’s chagrin and horror, that his father, the ‘old fool,’ had no other life in any case. He worked pretty much 24×7 even at 62.

When my friend repeated this conversation to me, I realised that he was not narrating to me a rare case of a grown-up kid living off his or her wealthy parents without really working. This was a familiar, repeated by older folks in a grave tone with an impending sense of gloom and doom.

More recently, another friend’s 14-year-old had asked his nagging mother why his grandpa couldn’t just ‘set up a trust of ₹50 or 100 crore’ so that he could be free to pursue his own interests and passions instead of slaving over studies. His point: Wasn’t the whole point of the previous generation to earn millions so the future generations could enjoy its fruits?

So that’s a thought right there. Should the progeny of high networth individuals spend their time doing exactly what the previous generation did? Post-liberalisation India has spawned a new class of affluent Indians who have their unique set of ‘problems’.

Burgeoning and skyrocketing income levels have left large swathes of women – especially wives – with very little to do, as even the most basic tasks are performed by a small retinue of staff. For 20 years, I have witnessed these family members in their gilded cages from which they never seem to be able to – or want to – break out. Not surprisingly, many seek an elusive ‘peace of mind’.

There is a palpable lack of drive and spirit in the rich young that was not the case a generation or two before. Parents of this set of these youngsters provide everything money can buy and then some more. Young men are routinely choosing to live both with and, in many instances, off their parents, a trend relatively uncommon a generation back even among the affluent. Sociologists and psychologists call this a ‘problem of plenty’. They believe that many of these children may lose sight of all goals, purpose and fall into depression, a dark abyss from which they fail to emerge.

But aren’t we as a society being presumptuous and falling prey – like every generation before ours – to the notion that we know best? Isn’t it possible that some affluent youngsters choosing not to ‘make it’ may end up doing more meaningful work since they have the luxury of thinking out of the box? Perhaps there could be some of us who could learn a bit from their toolkit and step off the treadmill and contribute more positively?

If you, dear reader, had the luxury of a ₹100 crore trust fund at 18, would you be doing what you are doing today?