The Richest Person Alive

 

The other day my son came rushing in to the kitchen and told me that Elon Musk is not the richest man on Earth anymore. ‘It’s a French fashion tycoon Bernard Arnault mama and his wealth is about $186.3 billion—putting him $300 million above Jeff Bezos, who is worth $186 billion, and Elon Musk, worth $147.3 billion,’ he went on spiritedly. The boy dreams to grow up rich and kept track of all the richest guys around.

 

Though he fantasizes of doing well in life, he was not a fan of hard work and labour when it came to helping out at home. He delegated his sister for everything from fetching his school stuff to doing his domestic chores. But things changed once I put him on a payroll for doing the chores around the house.

Miraculously from the next day on his bed was well made every morning, things at their designated spots, room always tidied and the boy even volunteered to do his own laundry. He was offering his assistance to lay the table and clear the table after dinner. Wow! I was literally stunned to see him carry the waste down with ease, a chore he had always made his sister do as it was ‘disgusting.’

What a change money can bring! Offering a little incentive always does the trick.

1988 was a  year that witnessed remarkable things. It was when digital cellular phones were invented. It saw the birth of Rihanna, the pop star. It was the year NASA resumed space shuttle flights, grounded after the Challenger disaster, with Space Shuttle Discovery and George H. W. Bush got elected over Michael Dukakis in the US presidential election. But to the ancestral house at Perumbavoor it was the year of the Great War against the mighty army of Musca domestica, the housefly.

 

No one could explain how the breach occurred. The house was under twenty-hour surveillance camera of the maid, Bindu who cleaned it diligently, dusting, mopping and swabbing every day.

The intruders infiltrated themselves every nook and corner of the house.  They swarmed around everywhere- every plate in the kitchen, every dish on the table, every fruit in the pantry were under attack.

People of the house tried everything they could to get rid of them. Bindu spayed the repellents like lemongrass, peppermint, eucalyptus, camphor, and cinnamon. She planted basil and marigold, the plants and flowers that claimed to rid the flies. She shifted from the traditional weaponry to the advanced ones, THE DEADLY C6H6O, popularly known as Phenol. But they found no result.

Meanwhile, the grandma of the house, let's call her ‘Ammachi,’ had been busy reading and researching in her desperate effort to hatch a masterplan, either conventional or original to wipe out the flies once and for all. Finally she came up with a killer move (an ultimate plan of action). A magical recipe, a secret antidote, against the deadly pan crustacean hexapod invertebrates.

A mixture of vinegar and dish soap can help you trap flies. To use this method, mix about an inch of apple cider vinegar and a few drops of dish soap in a tall glass. Cover the glass with plastic wrap. Secure the plastic wrap with a rubber band and poke small holes in the top.

Flies will be attracted to the vinegar in the glass and will fly through the holes. However, the dish soap causes the flies to sink instead of being able to land on the vinegar.

What an ingenious plan indeed! But alas! It did not do the trick either!!

 One afternoon while the elders were resting in the veranda engaged in idle conversation our gang of super villains started rummaging around ruining the peace and serenity of the pleasant gathering. What can be done when you are engaged in a battle against an invasive species of insects in your own terrain and all your strategies have failed?

Here is a tip that has been tried and tested from Biblical times; engage a kid to do the work for you!

Thus Sneha, the eight year old grandchild was summoned. She was assigned with the job of wiping out the insurgents and was offered a handsome reward of five rupee for every dead soldier of the enemy camp. The girl was pleased. After all five rupees was not a little amount. She was determined to do everything in her limits to get the job done.

Equipped with the modern manual fly swatter and her secret weapon - the Broom, Sneha immediately set out on the Mission Impossible! She conducted a surgical strike on the flies that camped on the veranda where the conclave was held.

She spent the whole day, chasing the bad guys. Many were knocked out. Some fell unconscious, some lost their legs and wings and a few were squashed to death by the beats and kicks of the Ninja Girl. Initially in her excitement at having send on a crucial assignment Sneha forgot to keep the carcasses as evidence. Later she got a bottle to stack the bodies which she promptly sealed as evidence of the work nicely done.

All together she butchered 50. As she was not good with her tables she laboriously worked out her Math. ‘If one dead fly is equal to 5 RS, how much will be 50 flies? It will be 50 X 5 = 250 RS/-

Everyone in the house were pleased to see the turn over. They congratulated Sneha on her triumph.  ‘Ammachi’ could not contain her joy, but she was not ready to pay the lump sum for a small operation like this. After all it is only a little girl’s job. Reluctantly she gave her a five rupee note and told ‘that’s all I can give.’

Sneha did not argue. She was not the Piped Piper of Hamelin. She had no pipe, no magic and surely didn’t have any shrewd business skills. So she skipped off jubilantly for she has made some money and felt that she was the richest woman alive on Earth.

Looking at what happened one thing was certain, she may not be featured in the Forbes magazine or The Economic Times among the richest people of the world. But then she never dreamt of becoming anything other than the brilliant Victor Insecta.