Gifts For Those Who Have Everything -- But Want More

The obscenely wealthy must surely be feeling oppressed in their penthouses and mansions and yachts as protests against their extravagances and unpunished corruption and immorality have spread across the country and the world. But just in time to give these suffering souls some hope, the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog (officially The Christmas Book) has been released. And talk about hope. Wouldn’t it perk you up to put on your wish list a Johnnie Walker Private Scotch Tasting Fantasy Gift, where “a top-notch event planner” would show up at your house and conduct a private tasting for you and 20 of your friends of the whole of the JW line – Red, Black, Green, Gold, and Blue. And each of your guests “will leave with a custom-engraved bottle of Johnnie’s premium-blend Blue Label for their personal enjoyment.” And all for just $5,000. Or maybe you’d prefer a custom-made table-tennis table, designed by artist Tom Burr – it doubles as a contemporary work of art – “perfectly sculpted from a distinctive choice in material – black rubber – turns ordinary sporting equipment into the sublime.” And only $45,000. But maybe you’d like to “escape to a serene place all your own”? Then you should ask to find an 18-foot-diameter yurt under your tree, complete with antique pillows, linen wall coverings, and a custom, handcrafted crystal chandelier, all “installed on your estate in the blink of an eye” for only $75,000. And maybe you should augment the yurt on your estate with a pair of custom dancing fountains, “two . . . amazing underwater robotic nozzles dancing as a couple, just for you.” Only $1,000,0000. (And if you tack on another $500,000, you can have a “guest choreographer” from the Fountains at Bellagio in Las Vegas come out and get your fountains really “Dancing In the Streets.” ) And of course you’ll want to have some getaway transportation, so why not ask for a Ferrari FF, with 651-horsepower V12 engine, a top speed of over 200 mph (useful in that bypass around those economic inequality protests), and an interior featuring “soft-touch semi-aniline leather with matching custom luggage set.” And only $395,000 (excluding “taxes, title, licensing, and registration fees plus delivery and handling charges”).

So who says life isn’t good? It sure is for at least a few of us.

Discomforting Mumbai

I’d seen poverty before. I’d seen it in New York, I’d seen it in Rome, I’d seen it in Chicago, I’d seen it in Belize, I’d seen it in Wichita and Denver and Atlanta and Santa Fe and Minneapolis and Memphis and San Francisco and just about every place I’d ever been. I’ve used the adjectives “destitute” and “abject” and “squalid” to modify the poverty I’ve seen. But there are no adjectives to adequately describe the poverty in Mumbai (Bombay). Indeed, “poverty” is hardly an adequate term. Drive along the Western Express Highway, and as you rise up onto a flyover you’ll look out over a checkerboard of crowded tin-roofed rusted shacks, inches separating them. Take an off-ramp and you’ll pass uncomfortably close to rows of tarp lean-tos against the gray concrete walls, the clog of traffic forcing you to see, dogs and cats and rag pickers foraging through the garbage. I couldn’t bring myself to photograph it – poverty porn – and I’m somewhat uncomfortable putting up here a couple of photos I got from the Internet. But I can’t describe the squalor that these people live in, and somehow survive in, without visual evidence:

But what is most discomforting about the poverty in Mumbai is the vast spectrum of wealth that the country’s caste system still exerts, from those in the poorest of slums to those in the most lavish of grandeur to the many scattered somewhere along the axis. On our first day in Mumbai, our driver (yes, we had a driver, putting us somewhere toward the lavish end of the spectrum, though nowhere near the grandeur end) pointed out the $1.8 billion, 27-story “home” of the wealthiest person in India (and the fourth wealthiest in the world). Our own accommodations, the ITC Maratha Hotel (which we weren’t paying for, and couldn’t pay for), forced the disparity uneasily home for us:

We wouldn’t have even been in Mumbai, of course, if we couldn’t have afforded it (helped immensely by company funding), and so wouldn’t have felt the embarrassment or sympathy, at least as much as we could manage to wring out of our shock (the guidebooks call it “cultural shock,” but the shock doesn’t really need modification). We very much enjoyed our time in Mumbai, the sightseeing, the food, the art, the history, even the elegant chaos of traffic congestion. But there is in the city always the undercurrent of inequality that lines and spreads out from the Western Express Highway, a dingy gray carpet of uneasy inhumanity.