This year's Forbes list of billionaires is out, and I'm glad that as many as twelve Indians have made it to the rich list, a threefold rise from 2001.
Best of all, Kolkata-boy Lakshmi Mittal has made it to number three, with a net worth of $25 billion. While we are all eager to see Mr Mittal continue his journey to the top of the list, our main concern, of course, is to see whether we too can emulate the steel czar, and make a billion or two for ourselves.
Lakshmi Mittal is world's 3rd-richest man
How do we do it? For clues, I turned to the Forbes website, where they have very helpfully put up a quiz on "Do you know what it takes to be a billionaire?"
The quiz has ten questions, and you're given a score out of 100. The first time I took the test, I got 38, and was disdainfully dismissed as "Joe Salariman", condemned to the 40*40*40 plan -- working forty hours a week for forty weeks in a year for forty years. No formula for being a billionaire, I'm afraid.
Even after cheating on the quiz -- I pretended that I invest in currency derivatives, raise thoroughbred horses for a hobby and have been married "multiple times" -- I was merely upgraded to the "upper tax bracket, nice house in suburbs, two-car garage, country club membership" category, well below billionaire status.
Saddened, I turned to the features to try and fathom what it was that made billionaires tick. One thing you don't want, according to the magazine, is too much brains.
The average wealth of those billionaires who dropped out of college is more than double those with a PhD. That's rather helpful. The article gives the example of "Spud King" John R Simplot, who left home when he was 14 because he was tired of milking the cows. What did he do instead of milking cows? He fed potatoes to hogs. These fine distinctions matter.
But enough of the small fry -- perhaps finding out how the really big billionaires whoop it up will give us some clues?
At the top of the list is Bill Gates, who has a dorky haircut, wears chinos, eats Happy Meals at McDonalds, drives his own car and tips badly. Number two on the list is living legend Warren Buffet, who drinks Coke, used to drive a beat up car and works like a maniac. Number 4 is a Mexican called Carlos Slim Helu, who, at age 10, opened a stand in front of his house to sell snacks and beverages to his family.
At number 6 we have Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of furniture maker IKEA, who used to travel economy class despite his money. This gets more and more bewildering -- where's the wine and the women, where's the hidden Caribbean getaway, the lolling in the lap of luxury? Instead, we seem to have plenty of hard work and lots of frugality. Is this what they earned all those billions for?
Perhaps no 5, being a prince, will be in a different class. Not really -- Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Al Saud is reputed to be devout and hard-working, and unlike many Saudi royals with several wives, he has married only once.
But surely Laksmi Mittal is a better advertisement for a billionaire? After all, he paid $127 million for his London mansion, and his daughter's wedding was the talk of the world.
The trouble is, he turns out to be a workaholic, with a lasting regret that he didn't do his MBA or his PhD. Nor are the other Indian billionaires much better -- most of them seem to be a spartan lot, their idea of enjoying themselves being spending more hours at their businesses. Why, some of them are even vegetarians.
In short, most billionaires, except a few like Sir Richard Branson or Roman Abramovich or our very own Vijay Mallya, seem to prove Hemingway's point that the only thing different about the rich is that they have more money. We don't even have any swashbuckling robber barons. That's a terrible disappointment. Our decadent maharajahs and dissolute zamindars did so much better.
