How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia: A Novel by Mohsin Hamid

Author:Mohsin Hamid [Hamid, Mohsin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf, mobi
ISBN: 9781594487293
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Published: 2013-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

THREE

DON’T FALL IN LOVE

MANY SELF-HELP BOOKS OFFER ADVICE ON HOW TO fall in love or, more to the point, how to make the object of your desire fall in love with you. This, to be absolutely clear, is not one of those self-help books. Because as far as getting rich is concerned, love can be an impediment. Yes, the pursuit of love and the pursuit of wealth have much in common. Both have the potential to inspire, motivate, uplift, and kill. But whereas achieving a massive bank balance demonstrably attracts fine physical specimens desperate to give their love in exchange, achieving love tends to do the opposite. It dampens the fire in the steam furnace of ambition, robbing of essential propulsion an already fraught upriver journey to the heart of financial success.

So it is worrisome that you, in the late middle of your teenage years, are infatuated with a pretty girl. Her looks would not traditionally have been considered beautiful. No milky complexion, raven tresses, bountiful bosom, or soft, moon-like face for her. Her skin is darker than average, her hair and eyes lighter, making all three features a strikingly similar shade of brown. This bestows upon her a smoky quality, as though she has been drawn with charcoal. She is also lean, tall, and flat-chested, her breasts the size, as your mother notes dismissively, of two cheap little squashed mangoes.

“A boy who wants to fuck a thing like that,” your mother says, “just wants to fuck another boy.”

Perhaps. But you are not the pretty girl’s only admirer. In fact, legions of boys your age turn to watch her as she walks by, her jaunty strut sticking out in your neighborhood like a bikini in a seminary. Maybe it’s a generational thing. You boys, unlike your fathers, have grown up in the city, bombarded by imagery from television and billboards. Excessive fertility is here a liability, not an asset as historically it has been in the countryside, where food was for the most part grown rather than bought, and work could be found even for unskilled pairs of hands, though now there too that time is coming to an end.

Whatever the reason, the pretty girl is the object of much desire, anguish, and masturbatory activity. And she seems for her part to have some mild degree of interest in you. You have always been a sturdy fellow, but you are currently impressively fit. This is partly the consequence of a daily regimen of decline feet-on-cot push-ups, hang-from-stair pull-ups, and weighted brick-in-hand crunches and back extensions taught to you by the former competitive bodybuilder, now middle-aged gunman, who lives next door. And it is partly the consequence of your night job as a DVD delivery boy.

Beyond your neighborhood is a strip of factories, and beyond that is a market at the edge of a more prosperous bit of town. The market is built on a roundabout, and among its shops is a video retailer, dark and dimly lit, barely large enough

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