The Rich

By A Rahim Khan – 

Who are they? What are they? Whatever the case, the land of the pure is apparently not fit to bear the children of the rich

Fitzgerald: The rich are different than you and me.

Hemingway: Yes, they have more money.

The rich. As it rolls off your tongue, and takes form, being expelled and consequently received, it already represents a loss, an exchange given rather than made. Two pieces of gold in, the words become special; they come packaged with an article. The equivalent of an honorific, ‘the’  is the academic refrain of choice, ennobling and intellectualising just about any  tripe it can be slapped upon, from the ‘other’ to the ‘queer’ to the ‘yawn’ and the ‘stifle’. With it, common words are gentrified, and given form, going from a nebulous catchall to resolute specificity, no longer the timid, little Bo Peep of generalization but the forthright indication of surety, not ‘rich’ but ‘the rich.’

Simply saying it, means that quite frankly, you are not from among them, that being them would be seen as patent class betrayal and that if and when you ever had as much as them, you’d do it better. You offer this as one from the middle classes, the accursed bourgeoisie, the neurotic median that feel righteous in their limited riches, safe from penury but distant from plenty, never a party but always a spread.

The ‘working man’ rant, where the said man would turn over the hands of the accused to inspect for the clear absence of calluses and knots, be disgusted by this and continue in stoic smoulder, has come to be appropriated by all classes not the rich, all waging a classist war against the high tower of the silver spoon, for, after all, what do the rich have to complain about?

But it would be unjust for any polemic to be without foundation. Yes, let it be exaggerated, indiscriminate, inciting and even petty but let it have a kernel of truth, later, watering it as you will into poisoned tree.

Our kernel of truth comes to us on the wings of a stalk, delivering gossip and then baby, glad tidings with fell truth.  The scene is that of a drawing room where among other guests, a hostess sits talking to a pregnant woman, the conversation ambling about but making routine pit stops at the ladies ‘with child’ condition.

It must be noted here that this drawing room and indeed the conversation belonged to one so definitively well off, that ‘The Rich’ comes so gloriously pronounced, alack that she must remain so anonymous.

After questions of when and what but thankfully not who or why have been asked, the hostess then inquires “Where? Where will the baby be born?” To this comes, at least the simpleton’s reply — for, the second interlocutor is not initiated with the rich — that the baby will be born at so and so hospital.

But the hostess pauses, wishes to clarify, possibly even smiles. She goes on to say that she did not mean ‘where?’ by what hospital but ‘where?’ by which country.

While the alarm of this question did not cause any labour pains it did however warrant explanation.

What did the hostess mean by which country will you have the baby in?

This is where it seems our pregnant lady appears naive or possibly ‘outclassed’ for any foetus of the rich would at a timely juncture board a plane, choose the Caucasian climes of the U.S., Canada or the U.K., wait its designated period, and then be born to a waiting room of relatives and white nurses.

The en vogue (‘trend’ would be too plebeian a word), you see, of which the hostess referred to was to have one’s baby born abroad, something among the rich that has apparently been going on for quite some time now  but  with the rest of us only now cottoning on. Ostensibly, this foreign birth is meant for the possible nationality it would entail but more readily it is because they’re rich enough to. Because they can. Because….

As spurious as the encounter above may sound it was perfectly and yes, saddeningly true. Sad, because while there is peace here, there is grief here, it is easy and hard to be here, the land is apparently no longer fit to bear the children of the rich.

But this is not a harangue about country and code but about the rich and their peculiarities, their abandon, their peeing in glass jars and bottling it for posterity.

Being of the rich, one must forever contend with boredom and ennui, it coming enshrined in the member’s guide and being against type to worry about anything else.

Days are spent sunning oneself in some convenient, wide-dispersal assured, location where to the marvel of any slack-jawed yokel with a care, the rich arrive in separate cars (though being of the same house, father and son), are ushered to their seats by personal guards and not the waiters, and then recount their blistering morning on the course, where ‘Teddy’ and ‘Jim’o’ had a lark and shot under par. True story. No names.

Sometimes gaunt (because ‘Johnny, ‘Jack’, ‘Harry’ and ‘Coco’ are food, too) the rich, at least the male of the specie, can be distinguished no longer by the cut of their suit, that is, sadly forgotten but by the kilo of gold they wear upon their wrists as watches, the dozen or so Bambis that now shod their feet as loafers (again sadly not moccasins) with of course the triumphant phallic symbols of their achievements (more so among their elders), the cigar. Possibly given all three when they make their first million, the rich must have one or the other by their side at all times, the trifecta giving the same slack jawed yokels even more to marvel at.

The la Femme d’argents are equally distinguishable, the high strut of their gait propelled by Louboutins, the weight of the poor gripped in their arms (because slinging it across your shoulder is just déclassé) as a handbag with the supercilious pronouncements of saying “Ya” and not “Yes.”

Their predilection to clip their vowels makes for elocution wonder, especially as it is born in Clifton and not Eton. They go abroad to study Art History or some other pissant degree for at the end they are meant to be simply adornments, like that M F Hussain hanging in the corner.

When it was making the rounds, red velvet was ambrosia but since that weekend in Paris it is macaroons and designer chocolate, rosé and lox. They ‘lunch’ with their girlfriends, all dolled up, and tarry for coffee, all sweetened down.

As a combined effort, rich men and women summer abroad and produce children, giving their young their best. Of course, rich mothers absolutely must have a Filipino maid for their cubs, for lessons in Tagalog are simply essential.

In christening the child, they will insists on exoticism with the names going anywhere but white (but Mashal can become Michelle). Created in their parent’s image, rich children are indistinguishable, held back only by their age.

As completely idle twits, fulfilling a literary stereotype, the rich are given to an excess of titles. They may no longer afford a grandee’s litany, but they come up with a surfeit of imitations.

Invariably, the nicknames are meant to be ersatz white, for the Raj never truly ended and like the Gussies and Catsmeats of old they have their ‘Dodos’ and ‘Pinkys’, ‘Bunnys’ and ‘Billys’.

They are our pride and joy, our best, our elite as all heads turn as they enter, follow as they are seated and turn again as they leave. Never in want but always in need, they are circumstance blessed. We see them and see ourselves as we cannot be for who are the rich? Are they these abstracted caricatures that wander the land in search of the next fix? Or honest to goodness people assailed by green envy? With no moral to this story let the conclusion be its own.

The writer is an art critic based in Islamabad