Pocket money

The kids have been getting some pocket money thanks to tips from visiting relatives. To my consternation, these have been hefty amounts for such little kids, the kind I got to see only when I started working. I dont like the idea of under-10s getting such money as it doesnt teach them the value of each penny. For them, Rs.500 seem to be the lowest denomination, so anything less than that is like a pittance. A bottle of mineral water at the restaurant for Rs.30 elicits the response: Oh, so cheap!

Anyway, they are also learning to chip in to help the parents who are increasingly sounding like they are hard-up whenever the duo wants this or that. Ash has been pleading with us to buy a tab so that he can play all his favorite games. Not only do his friends talk about using them (apart from playstations and mobile phones), he actually saw his cousin playing with an ipad she had got as a birthday gift. That she was somewhat reluctant to share her expensive toy made him all the more keen on one for himself.

So the long and short of it is that he has offered to put in all his pocket money (what left after he bought a few books at the Scholastic Fair, which were not exactly what his mom would have wanted him to buy) to help his penny-pinching parents buy a new Samsung tab. V who seemed on the verge of buying a tab for a week seems to have lost interest now and is hoping that Ash will forget about it soon. Though the son is not the kind to forget anything he badly wants.

The best part is that he has offered to give all he has to buy a villa project we saw yesterday in the outskirts. It has everything the kids fancy - a pool, gym, play areas, badminton/tennis courts etc etc. I guess it reminded them a little of the gated bungalows in Nairobi he had spent his last summer holidays. Both have been entreating us to buy it at some cost. But what costs for something that is in the back of beyond right now for people working in the heart of the city. Maybe 5-10 years later, we might regret not buying it but right now that is the least of our priorities.