THE RICHEST POOR MAN

HELLO,

RESPECTED RICH CITY MAN. DO YOU REALISE HOW POOR YOU ARE?

you who are called sir, boss, doctor, CEO, professor, investor,

you with five phones, three passwords for banking, two for healthcare,

and zero time to breathe.

You were born in a concrete box,

studied in another box,

worked all your life in glass boxes,

and will die in a white box called ICU,

where even your final breath won’t be yours — it’ll be billed.

You’ve achieved everything your childhood was programmed to chase:

top school,

branded shoes,

foreign trips,

a corner office,

and a car so smart, it warns you when it’s going to suffocate you.

But look around, sir.

You don’t have clean air.

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YOU CANNOT BREATHE WITHOUT MACHINES

You installed an air purifier in every room —

and still cough blood when winter smog arrives.

Your child is asthmatic at 9.

Your father wheezes even after retiring.

Your balcony has a “no dust” curtain,

but your lungs are layered with diesel soot.

You wear a mask for pollution,

another for viruses,

and a third one made of pride — to hide the truth.

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YOU DRINK FILTERED TOXICITY

You boast of an RO filter worth ₹40,000.

But your water comes from a tanker that was filled from the same lake

where your society dumps its sewage.

You buy “Himalayan” water in plastic bottles,

while calling rural water “unhygienic.”

Your tea has microplastics.

Your child's protein shake has hormone-disrupting chemicals.

But you still post your kale salad on Instagram.

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YOU EAT WITHOUT NOURISHMENT

You eat from menu cards, not from soil.

Your wheat comes from 2,000 km away.

Your rice has arsenic.

Your milk is from a cow you’ve never seen, injected daily to produce double.

You take vitamin tablets every morning

because you’ve forgotten how to grow coriander on your own windowsill.

You pay ₹400 for one jackfruit chip packet from an organic store,

because you laughed at the farmer who once offered it for free.

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YOU HAVE HEALTHCARE, NOT HEALTH

You say, “We have the best hospitals.”

Yes. And they are full.

Full of men like you —

aged 42, cardiac arrest.

aged 36, brain fog, fatty liver.

aged 29, infertility and back pain.

You have a family physician, dermatologist, dentist, neurologist, fertility expert —

but still no diagnosis for why you feel empty every morning.

You talk of “mental health” on World Health Day,

then scroll till 2 am,

eat 8 meals of junk in the name of comfort,

and pop SSRIs before walking into a Zoom call.

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YOU HAVE MONEY, BUT NO VALUE

You earn lakhs per month, but still need EMIs.

You bought a flat for 1.2 crores but can’t grow a tulsi plant in it.

Your electricity bill is higher than a farmer’s annual income —

and yet, if the grid goes off for 3 hours, you panic.

You bought a treadmill to simulate walking.

You bought a sunrise alarm lamp to simulate nature.

You buy branded silence in hill resorts

because you cannot find it in your 4-bedroom house.

You’ve outsourced every skill your grandfather considered basic:

Cooking

Cleaning

Fixing

Growing

Healing

Listening

Now, your existence is an orchestra of apps and staff.

Without them, you’re a man-child in a marble cage.

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YOU HAVE EDUCATION, BUT NO WISDOM

You have a degree in finance but don’t know how to grow a tomato.

You can debug code but cannot stitch a button.

You speak fluent English, but not your grandmother’s tongue.

You know GDP, crypto, startup valuation —

but not what a real papaya tastes like when it ripens on the tree.

You laugh at villagers,

but need Google Maps to find your own apartment from the parking lot.

You’ve become a spectator in life.

A user, not a maker.

An owner, not a doer.

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YOU HAVE CONNECTIONS, BUT NO RELATIONSHIPS

You have 6000 followers,

but no one to help you shift a broken sofa.

You have LinkedIn endorsements,

but haven’t sat beside your mother without checking your phone.

Your son calls you “bro.”

Your wife says “nothing” when everything’s wrong.

Your father talks to the wall.

And your daughter thinks love is measured in gifts and school grades.

You speak about boundaries on social media

but have none —

not with your phone, not with your boss, not with your own guilt.

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YOU ARE FAMOUS, BUT NOT FREE

You go on vacations that you don’t remember.

You smile in photos you don’t mean.

You eat food you can’t digest.

You sleep with pills.

You wake with caffeine.

You work for someone you hate.

You live in a city you never chose.

You are praised.

You are awarded.

You are respected.

But not once have you sat under a neem tree and just breathed

without noise, guilt, or schedule.

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DO YOU REALISE HOW POOR YOU ARE?

You’ve lost the sky.

You’ve lost the soil.

You’ve lost your ability to rest, digest, feel, weep, sing, or surrender.

You don’t own your breath.

You don’t trust your senses.

You don’t know the names of your own body’s signals.

You were told to chase success.

But you were never told what it costs:

Your air.

Your water.

Your food.

Your sleep.

Your touch.

Your time.

Your truth.

And now, your mind tells you —

“This is normal. This is life. This is adulthood.”

But this is poverty of the worst kind:

The kind you refuse to see.

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