“Maybe in our age of the billionaires, the ratio could as well be one in a million.”
“You may not be off the mark after all,” he said. “Aren’t more and more people getting exposed to the temptations of money these days, and don’t I know how difficult it is to resist the temptation of the moolah. More so, as it appears, Mammon and Bacchus have pushed Venus to the backbench of life. Well, warming up to the dubious, didn’t I make it appear that only those who courted me counted? But why would sane minds court the empty heads any way? But still, I didn’t care that my attitude distanced the discerning, even Anand my nephew I was fond of, and he was the last to know of my tragedy. Why not, won’t it take time for news to trickle down to the distant relations? When he came to offer his condolences, how my troubled conscience was solaced by the empathy I saw in his eyes! What a contrast it was with the put-ons of others underscored with their eyes-on-my-heirless-wealth! It was as if his ethos had placed my derailed life back on its ethical tracks. How I pleaded with him to become the prince of my domain and the inheritor of my fortune, and it was only when he declined my offer, did I realize what a pauper I was in spite of my riches.”
“Don’t tell me he’s a saint not wanting to be one of the richest on earth. Maybe, it’s his weird way of getting even with you.”
“You may know that he values love above all else, and that’s saintly, isn’t it?” he said. “He’s skeptical about the senseless wealth for its malefic affects on the ethos of his life, and what’s worse, the questionable quality of those that it ushers into one’s life. While his modest station in life keeps off the axe-grinders and the gold-diggers from trespassing into his life to his hurt, he’s afraid that the halo of my bequeathal would change all that for it might make him a false deity flocked by the dubious gang. That used to be my philosophy of life as well. I always wanted a woman to enter into my life, pulled by my persona and not seduced by my wealth for I know women have a weakness for successful men. Well for my part, I always had a weakness for desirable women. When Ruma wanted me to own her and her riches as well, for good or for bad, it all changed forever, but now, how I wish I had his pragmatism to love and to life. Whatever, that monetary rise was the beginning of my moral fall.”