Being born and brought up in a Hindu family, I have been taught various concepts like “Janma” “Mrityu” “Karma” etc. I have been taught that life is a journey that has a start line i.e. “Janma” and a finish line i.e. “Mrityu”. And the journey is a complex composite of various do’s, don’ts and concerns.
Taking a leave from the theory, today the journey has become a market and the traveller is a consumer. We start to cater a market right when we are born and keep becoming a part of various targeted segments all along our lives, performing the karma of market. As we grow up, we become a part of it supporting the system so that the new ones to come have a ‘ready to go through’ cycle.
For a toddler the ones really targeted are his/her parents, who are motivated at every end of an advert to buy such and such medically proven products that would take the best care of the baby. As they grow up, they enter the segment of education, where every stage has a commission agent involved. Every fee paid has a pending ‘cut’. We are just quietly enjoying the view and performing our karma of earning, spending, paying, borrowing, repaying etc.
Once the education sets us to the shores of the system to become a part of it, to get engulfed by a huge tide wave of either the “unemployed” or the system, that may make us capable of supporting it in exchange of bare minimums, we’re the ‘blinded’ free. As they say, the ones who stand aside always stand alone. So if you take up your passion off the mainstream, get ready to face some friction.
All along the journey comes up with financial tantrums, smothered on our face. Numbers made complex and big to serve the fat pocketed. The biggest sector of the market touching the smallest ones. The idea must have come when the first human would have thought of gathering more than he needed.
The karma of market keeps us busy all our lives, running a race on a circular track so that the ends could meet.