Of Borrowed Dimes and Borrowed Times
First World Problem: "Too rich for financial aid, too poor to pay for college."
Sipping on your Pina Coladas in your fully air-conditioned home, the alarm going off on your $300 iPhone may compel you to turn off your $1000 54-inch plasma and wonder how you can afford to buy yourself an early retirement. That however will not happen to us because not only do we not even have flat screen TVs, we can't even afford to live.
Us third-worlders are ridden with so much debt, it makes first-world student loans and mortgage payments look like a joke. Bangladesh alone has an external debt of over 30 billion dollars according to the 2013 CIA Factbook and we don't even know where this money was spent or what on earth it even means. Alarmingly though, money is not the only thing that we borrow. Third Worlders live on borrowed everything. And I really mean everything. Just think it over in the Bangladeshi context.
Firstly, many Bangladeshis have a borrowed identity. We speak, write and communicate in a borrowed language and spend 10 years mastering that very language while forgoing our own. Then, we borrow entire personalities and dressing styles, choosing the Brad Pitts, Al Pacinos and Johnny Depps over our own role models like Ananta Jalil and Shakib Khan. Ok, so the wardrobe selection makes the choice easier, but does that mean we would don a lungi if Brad Pitt did so? No, because firstly he would never do that and even if he did Aamir Khan wouldn't and we just don't borrow from one country or an individual; we do the Ponzi Scheme on a country level because that's just how we roll, for instance buying arms from countries who gave us the money to begin with anyway.
Then, consider the fact that our existence solely lies on our ability to borrow time. Without first-worlders failed attempts at controlling climate change, our destruction would have been swifter. Everyday we sink a little deeper, lose entire areas and are ravaged by ever harsher floods and cyclones. We beg for the Kyoto Protocol to be signed. We borrow electricity to light up our 60 watt worlds and power up our latest Windows 2000. To boost equality and regional growth, we borrow money to build grand bridges, but at times we are rebuffed for stealing the money we are yet to borrow.
We, the third-worlders, don't borrow out of necessity but because we really like to. Then we spend the borrowed money envisioning roads, bridges, forest reserves and much more. We also hoard our borrowed money, depleting its value with rising levels of inflation and ever increasing interest payments, as an over 10 billion foreign currency reserve can testify to.
As time passes, our desire to borrow grows in proportion. We now begin to borrow socialist and capitalist ideals that the first world has tossed away. We borrow their failure and we borrow their ideologies, failing to mould them to represent our needs. In the end, amidst all the borrowing, we knowingly put our entirety as collateral existence and as is inevitable, one day we will have given everything we ever owned for everything we ever owed. And then we'll know that it's too late. It always was.
Osama Rahman is a regular columnist for Star Lifestyle, resident detective and a man's rights activist.
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