I had originally planned to talk today about two things: one, my experiences with money growing up in India and two, some new developments (like cryptocurrency) on the money scene today.

I tried out a draft on some sharp listeners. Too much, they said. You’ve got two talks there. 

So I split it up. Here is part I: lessons from far away and long ago.

LESSONS IN THE GARDEN

First, there was the mental effort of it all. Arithmetic class in the third standard (fourth grade) was hard. 

I attended Mrs. Law’s International School in New Delhi, which sounds pretty fancy, but it really wasn’t. 

There were six kids in my class—three Indians, two Americans, and an Australian. We sat at a low table under the trees in Mrs. Law’s garden, with crows observing from the branches, and lizards scurrying about underfoot.

The British had been gone less than a decade from India; but they’d left their math textbooks behind.

We learned to add and subtract pounds, shillings, and pence. A pound contained twenty shillings; a shilling, twelve pence. Half a crown meant two shillings and six pence and thruppence meant three pennies. Try multiplying and dividing that stuff.

However, this was now independent India, so we also did calculations on Indian currency: rupees, anna, and pice. That was no easier. There were sixteen annas to a rupee, 4 pice to an anna, 3 pies to a pice. 

After school, we had more fun with this currency. My sister Lee and I rode our bicycles to the local market and bought candy, or a pencil, or a hair clip. 

The one-rupee notes were pinkish, and often worn soft as cloth. The coins came in interesting shapes: a square half-rupee, a round one-anna coin with a fluted edge, a circular one-pice piece hollowed out in the center.

Then, all of a sudden, these coins became collector’s items. In 1959, India decimalized its currency. 

And I also got introduced to American dollars. Multiply or divide by ten? Move the decimal point. All of a sudden, arithmetic problems were so easy they were almost cheating.

LESSONS IN THE BAZAAR

Shortly before my thirteenth birthday, I left home for Woodstock School, a boarding school at about 6,500 feet in the foothills of the Himalayas. It was just outside the town of Mussoorie, a 180-mile car ride from New Delhi.

We shared the road with plodding camels and creaking bullock carts. After the town of Dehra Dun, came the ascent up a winding mountain road, 22 miles of sharp hairpin bends. 

The heat of the plains was left behind, and cool mountain air felt like peppermint on your arms. Spectacular views opened out of the plains and forests below. North of the town were majestic snow-capped peaks.

Cars were only allowed to a point about three miles from the school. There, we got out and walked. Porters carried our trunks on their heads or their backs and trotted off at astonishing speed, leaving us in their wake.

We hiked through a town that had some overtones of a Swiss village, with carved balconies jutting out overhead on the streets. The town was on an ancient trade route from central Asia, and had a cheerful, cosmopolitan feel. There were many Tibetans in view, people who had escaped with the Dalai Lama from Chinese rule. Tibetan women in multi-colored striped aprons sold sheepskin jackets and prayer wheels and turquoise jewelry.

Merchants from Kashmir displayed carved furniture and lacquered boxes. Pharmacies and bookstores lined the streets, and cloth stores stocked with Madras cotton plaid or Benares silks. There were stalls with racks and racks of colored glass bangles that glinted in the sun. 

Cows wandered along helping themselves to tomatoes from vegetable stalls. Firewood sellers trudged along under their loads, and teams of four men pulled rickshaws loaded with whole families. 

A rickshaw stand was the landmark at which we turned onto the Tehri Road, which led toward Tibet. Half a mile later was the main classroom building of Woodstock School, established in 1854. It looked like a massive stone castle. Five hundred feet downhill were the white and yellow-washed dormitories, with their corrugated red metal roofs.

In this environment, we were taught a lot of lessons about wealth and poverty.

LESSONS IN THE CLASSROOM

The school was run by several different Protestant missions, and we had Bible study, or Scripture, as we called it, three times a week. 

We learned that riches had their dark side.

The love of money is the root of all evil.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.

We also learned that you shouldn’t be too attached to possessions.

If a man sues you for your coat, give him your cloak as well. 

And certainly, that we shouldn’t worry about money.

         Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin. Yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.

But what had that to do with real life?

The principal, in his Thursday morning address, once told us this stark fact:

         You—all of you—are rich.

This was clear to me, for the contrasts of India were never far from view. Those rickshaw pullers did back-breaking work, and then four of them split a fare of a dollar or two. 

Yes, we students were rich. But not all of us felt that way.

About two-thirds of the students were American. Of these, most were missionary kids (“mish kids,” we called them), with the minority from secular backgrounds lumped under the category of Embassy or government (“gov”) kids.

Gov kids had the latest popular records and record players—and new American clothes.

Mish kids, some of them anyway, dressed in used clothes from the proverbial mission box. Some had parents who were “out in the field on faith”—meaning that they didn’t get a salary, but trusted that God would provide.  

We saw these differences when we withdrew money at Friday after lunch from Student Bank.

Student Bank took place at a long table outside the auditorium. The school accountant sat with huge ledger book opened in front of him, the green pages full of hand-written entries. He looked up what you’d taken out that month, and told you how much you had left. 

The maximum monthly allowance permitted was 25 rupees a month—about 5 dollars.

Most gov kids got that full amount, as did kids from the wealthier missions—like the Methodists and the Presbyterians.

But others—some from obscure little missions—only got 10 rupees (two dollars), or 5 (one.) 

TEMPTATIONS OF THE BAZAAR

What was there to spend it on?

Plenty. Especially on those Saturday excursions to the bazaar, or “buzz,” as we called it.

Clothes. A yard of cotton cloth cost twenty cents. The tailor’s fee for making it into a skirt—twenty more. 

Lunch at Kwality restaurant. Should I have a ham banjo (a little round fried sandwich) or a samosa or Chinese food? Wash it down with Coca-Cola in the curved green bottle? That would be another four annas (five cents.)

What else could you spend your allowance on?

Street food: roasted corn, or spicy grains wrapped in a flute of newspaper. 

The movies at the Picture Palace.

If you didn’t go to town, the town came to you.

Box wallahs visited the dorms, sat cross-legged on the concrete walk and opened up their tin trunks. They sold pastries and licorice sticks and black and white peppermint bullseyes. But practical things, too—combs and needles and thread and enamel-ware cups and bottles of ink to use in your fountain pen.

We also taxes to pay—taxes we imposed on ourselves. Each class had a student government with a class governor, a secretary, and a treasurer. We voted to have class dues. We voted on a class uniform that we’d wear in the marching competition on Sports Day. We voted to have a class flag made. We all had to pay up, with our own money. There wasn’t a sliding scale.

WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

For some personal expenses, mish kids improvised. My first week at school, I saw a girl in my dorm cutting sanitary napkins in two, and sewing up the open edge. That doubled her supply.

For the big social event of the year, the “Junior-Senior Banquet,” girls with money had new dresses made up of silk bought in town; girls without wore borrowed gowns. 

Nor were the boys spared. One told me—twenty years later—how he didn’t have a dollar for a corsage from the florist in town for his date. So, he hiked miles back into the hills and scaled a steep, slippery limestone cliff to where he knew some blue gentians grew. He brought them back and tied them up with a ribbon. (It turned out that the girl’s dress was green, and blue and green were not considered to go together. But she attached the flowers to her wrist, and off they went to the party.)

Economizing at school did not apply only to money. Our showers were to be no longer than three minutes. We got demerits for leaving our lights on.

OTHER LESSONS LEARNED

We learned quite a few more things about money. 

We learned to contribute. The Dalai Lama, then a very young man, had at that time temporary headquarters in town. A Tibetan School had just been established.

The Dalai Lama forged a special friendship with the school. He came and addressed us in assembly, and later, attended a Christmas concert, sneaking in without fanfare to the back row of the auditorium.

Woodstock students, for their part, took up a collection to give to the children of the Tibetan School. What did the children want, we asked? They wanted butter to put in their tea, Tibetan style. We thought it was odd, but that’s what they got. 

We also learned to share among ourselves.

Individually, some of us had plenty of clothes—and others didn’t. Collectively, we had a huge wardrobe.

We lent and borrowed practically everything. If a friend’s skirt was too long, we rolled it up at the waist and covered it with a wide belt.

I had a pair of dress shoes embroidered with pink and green and blue flowers. They went with everyone else’s party dresses! And so they made their way down the hall, and to many different events.

My roommate had an American sweater made of some shaggy green synthetic, the only one like it in the dorm. It too made the rounds, not necessarily being washed between one wearer and the next.

Inequality was glaring between us and the outside world. It also existed in our own little world, but at least it could be blunted, with cooperation and a casual approach toward ownership.

LESSONS FORGOTTEN—FORTUNATELY

In those Scripture classes I mentioned, we heard that it was evil to be rich. Fortunately for the school, enough alumni ignored that lesson and made plenty of money. Many have given back to the school amounts that would have seemed astronomical when we were students. They’ve given new laboratories, a state-of-the-art gymnasium, and a world-renowned outdoor education center. They’ve paid to remodel shabby dormitories and turn dark old classrooms into a beautiful music wing.

We’ve all had to unlearn a lot about the specifics of money. Shillings and pence and annas are gone. The rupee doesn’t trade at 4.7 to a dollar, but whatever the fluctuating market says it’s worth (76 and a half rupees as of yesterday.) 

We think about money now on a different scale. We no longer have a skirt made for 40 cents. But some basic concepts stick with me, now more important than ever as the world faces environmental catastrophe.

I am still highly aware of scarcity, or even potential scarcity. If someone lets the water run, I run over to the sink and turn it off. I cut off lights other people have left on. Water and energy—we’ll be thinking a lot about this type of wealth in the years to come. 

And we may have to practice a lot more sharing and a lot more cooperation.

On June 12 I’ll be back with more ideas about money and wealth. Can you hide Bitcoin under your mattress? See you then.

Order-of-Service-20220424