I heard a story about a person who hoarded toilet paper worth, hold your breath, $ 8000. One packet of toilet comes with 32 rolls and costs about $ 16. That means this person bought 500 packets i.e. 16000 rolls. What on earth he was thinking when he decided to hoard so much. The current Corona pandemic stoked the fear of shortage of toilet paper. This fear must have lead to a panic and finally a streak of lunacy when he just kept on buying.

Now after the bout of madness faded away, he has realised that he doesn’t have enough money to pay his usual monthly bills. And now he is trying desperately to sell off the stocks, to supermarkets but nobody is ready to touch it. He then tried selling to individuals but again without success. Who will buy from him in the current fear of Corona transmission?

This is a typical mentality of the entire western world. They tend to live beyond their means and the culture of saving for rainy days just doesn’t exist. They tend to live on credit cards. This will rarely happen for Indians. Any person from any strata of society wants to save some portion of his income as security for future.

This is a classic case how a human being can be exploited by making him afraid. Once a man is full of fear, he is ready to submit. Once a man is trembling inside, he loses trust in himself. Then he is ready to believe in any stupid nonsense. When fear knocks on door who bothers about logic, reason, argument? Being in fear, you tend to imagine things that may happen out of thin air.

This is a great lesson to all of us.

Yeshwant Marathe

yeshwant.marathe@gmail.com

#Fear #Panic #Lunacy #Toilet_Paper #Savings