Do you remember, if you are a student, how much money you owe the hostel vendor? And has your friend returned the 50 rupees he had borrowed from you last month?
Borrowing and lending represent as dubious an affair as asking out a pretty girl for coffee. You hesitate, not sure what answer you are going to receive — a borrower. She is reluctant, weighing your sincerity (and perhaps your looks) — a lender. The common ground for both the transactions is trust. And then, why would you not trust someone you know as a friend when he asks for 1000 rupees and promises to pay it back next week, even if you know that he means ‘weeks’ and that his weeks are of 27 days each.
Between friends
Is it not interesting how profound a role money can play between friends? The traditional snigger of a lender and the embarrassed look of the borrower are transformed into intelligible silence on both sides. While the same matter (of money) is foremost in the minds of both, it turns out to be the only thing that goes unmentioned. One is in constant fear of spilling over the matter. The other is in ambush mode at the slightest hint to pounce upon.
And while one deliberately avoids his company, the other recants all sorts of vulgar opinions for him. And so friends who would have helped each other to tea, stop being informal and no more tease each other.
The reason?
It is difficult to ascertain the reason for this near-eternal postponement of repaying debts.
Forgetfulness can be no reason or it should be the most contagious of ailments. What security could encourage such complacency?
I have known some people with a sufficient bank balance resorting to borrowing. In the view of many there is no shame in it: people who do not compromise anything for their conscience, without letting a whiff of accountability to get near them.
What of this filching? Can it not be called extortion of sorts? There are people who flatly refuse. There are others who give you such a look that you start wondering if it is your own money you are asking for. Some stop answering your phone calls, or when you check upon them suddenly they inform you with nonchalance: “Oh, I just bought a book I needed. Why didn’t you tell me before?” And that just makes you feel like a beggar.
Very few are kept in check from borrowing further just because some amount is already due on them. They are as unabashed as a hungry crow, their smile symbolising the gaping jaws of a crocodile. Your heart sinks at their very sight.
Such people are, in all fairness, warned against, but consummate as they are, make people part with their money with less than half the hope of ever getting it back. It is not surprising then to see people announcing well within the earshot of such persons how within a week they have exhausted every single penny they had got from home.
I have had the pleasure of amusing myself with the provoking cunning of a gentleman who had made it a habit to return sweetly my money only to come the next day asking for double the amount.
I later came to know that the money paid back to me was most of the time just borrowed from someone else. Some track you in public and give you your money in as patronising a manner as makes of you a desperate borrower. Still others return it in such trickles that, to quote T.S. Eliot, “the giving famishes the craving”.
Reminders
You must have known people who remind you every day that they have your 500 rupees with them and they will soon return it — which makes you doubt if you know the exact meaning of ‘soon’ and it is not a synonym of ‘never’.
You may have heard people say that a certain person had borrowed some money saying “You are the only person I could bring myself to ask for. One cannot go around asking everybody”, and it turns out that the same person had gone to a dozen other such individuals as well and lightened their pouches saying the very same thing.
Someone might well reason that since people spend quite a sum on some extra cups of tea and other such luxuries, what would they lose if they let go the ‘small’ amount borrowed by him. Well, tell him he might as well repay the amount for the same reason. But of course there are people who you find standing at your doors on the promised day or even earlier with a grateful smile on their face (and the money, of course). Is it not ironical that one has to discourage borrowing in borrowed terms? So, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,/ For loan oft loses both itself and friend” (Hamlet, Act 1, scene 3, 75–77)
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Published - May 28, 2017 12:03 am IST
