It baffles me how so many
Of friends who are intelligent,
Aware of worldly finances,
Aware of costs and expenses,
Forget to calculate the costs
Of keeping dying men alive,
In hopes of strong recovery
For months and months and months and months.

You never ask them for a dime
And they assume you’re deep in cash.
They act surprised when you admit
You don’t have high-speed internet;
You don’t have Netflix, Hotstar, Prime;
You don’t have stuff on EMI;
And though who study investing,
You don’t have any active stocks.

And then, forgeting all the things
They take for granted in their lives
They ask you why you don’t purchase
A chocolate cake for “birthday bash”,
Or send some link on Amazon
Of something pretty expensive,
Of something no one really needs,
But they think you should look to buy.

The only thing that makes it worse
Is when you ask them to their face
To guess your monthly expenses
And they come up with numbers that
They think are overestimates
In the hopes that they don’t hurt
Your clearly hurting sentiments,
And then you have to ask them to
“Go higher” once, and twice again,
And all they say in response then
Is, “Oh, I did not realise.”