what's your rate?

[SoftSword]

The following story is written by my fellow colleague cum good friend...
I thought of sharing this story with you all...
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Having completed my graduation, I moved to the city where I had recently got a job as a trainee in a private accounting firm. I was brought up in a foster home and had just a small piece of land in the village, which I had leased it to a farmer while I was away. The hardships faced in my foster home, the fact that I had no blood relation in the world, these were not the thoughts that were in my mind as I just managed to get into the bus that would take me to my office. Missing this bus, would have caused me another thirty minutes delay to reach office and I couldn’t afford to do that, if I wanted to be noticed by the partners of the firm.

I had just started going through my client’s balance sheet, when I heard it for the first time.

“Mine is four. What’s your rate?”
“Wow four already. I think mine is around three lakhs”.

The mention of three lakhs got my complete attention and I got up to have a look at the source of this distraction. They were a bunch of trainees and I decided to join them in their conversation.

“Hi, I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. What are these numbers that you are talking about?”

“Oh, we were discussing about our ‘market’ value, that the prospective bride’s family is willing to pay to us. You know you are worth a couple of lakhs yourself”, said one of them with a wink.

The mention of money placed all my social beliefs in the backburner and by the end of the conversation I had decided to get married to someone who would be willing to pay my rate. As I did not have anybody to consult for my decisions pertaining to my personal life, I decided to give this a shot at the earliest. After all I was going to marry someday, so why not sometime soon? Imagine the things that I could do with the money they would pay me.

So the very next day I posted my ‘resume’ on a couple of matrimonial websites. The waiting began.

After a couple of failures I finally locked on to one girl. Not that the bride’s family had decided to pay my value, it was just that I had finally identified someone who was a potential life partner. I met her for a couple of times before we decided to give our consent. The marriage date was fixed for the next week and it was to be a simple marriage in front of the marriage registrar.

I had decided to place my demands on the day of the wedding, for maximum impact (atleast that’s what they show in the soaps). On the day of the wedding the bride and her family were already there before I turned up at the registrar’s office. I called the bride’s father aside and demanded for two lakhs, to marry her daughter.

The change in my in-law’s face was astounding. It wasn’t an expression of submission or helplessness but that of anger. He immediately called his relatives and explained the situation.

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