Mohsin Hamid - How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

“I’m not interested,” he says.

“You were before.”

“What happened to the other one?”

“I replaced him.”

“I didn’t trust him.”

“You should be happy then.”

“I don’t trust you either.”

He shouts at his assistant, who has knocked over a stack of breakfast cereal boxes. You glance at the shelves. They are stocked with a mix of foreign and domestically produced goods, foodstuffs mainly, but also cleaning supplies, lightbulbs, cigarettes, and, unexpectedly, a pair of unboxed air conditioners.

You point to the last. “You sell those?”

“They’re used. There’s demand for them.”

You open your satchel and slowly tap half a dozen cans and bottles down on his counter. “Tuna.” Tap. “Soup.” Tap. “Olives.” Tap. “Soy sauce.” Tap. “Ketchup.” Tap tap tap. “Lychee juice.” Tap. “All imported.”

“I already have all this.”

“I know. That’s why I’m showing these to you. How much are you paying?”

He looks at you with disgust. “Tell me this. Why are you cheaper?”

“We’re a big outfit.”

He sneers. “You? I’m sure.”

“Our owner has contacts at customs. He gets stuff through without paying duty.”

“So does everybody else.”

“Why don’t you want a good deal?”

“Because I don’t like good deals I don’t understand.”

“It’s not stolen.”

“I’m not buying it.”

“Really, it’s not stolen.”

“You think I’m deaf?” He spits on the floor at your feet. “Get out.”

“There’s no reason for…”

“Get out, dirty pimp motherfucker.”

You stare at him, taking in his potbelly, his flimsy little mouth, his weak, breakable wrists. But you are also aware he keeps his right hand low, under the counter, out of sight. And you sense shoppers taking notice, his assistant lingering at the entrance, passersby pausing outside. Mobs form quickly in these insecure times, and mobs can be merciless. You stand your ground for a moment. Then you garrote your anger, pack your samples, and leave without another word.

“I know all about your scam,” he yells out behind you.

You try not to dwell on this incident as you ride back home through the still, smoky dusk. Your costs are low because your master sources recently expired goods at scrap prices, erases the expiry date from the packaging, and reprints a later date instead. This is not as simple as it sounds, there being a number of tricks to removing ink unnoticeably and requiring great attention to detail in the printing process. Products do have built-in safety margins, and inventory turnover in the city is usually high, so for the most part there should be limited risk to consuming what you sell. You are simply increasing the efficiency of the market, ensuring goods that would otherwise be wasted find buyers at reduced price points. You have never heard of anyone dying as a result.

Your work is a far cry from your father’s simple trade, but despite your misgivings, you would not consider changing places with him, not at his prime, when he traveled to and from his employer’s premises in generally good spirits and good health, and certainly not now, when he is easily exhausted and can no longer stand in the kitchen for more than an hour at a stretch. He has secured a job with a couple returned from abroad who do not like having servants in the house. He wheezes his way over to them every second morning, as they are leaving for work, cooks and refrigerates their dinner for two nights, and takes a bus home by midday. In the afternoons and on alternate days he recovers from his exertions.

The pair of you have moved to slightly larger accommodations, and you have told your father he no longer needs to earn a wage. But he does not desire to be a burden, and in any case he feels employment is the natural state of a man. He would do more if he could, but he cannot.

Your father suffers from a broken heart, both literally and figuratively. He misses your mother intensely, yearning for her even more after her passing than ever during her life. Also his genes and the cholesterol-laden cuisine he has prepared and eaten in wealthy homes for decades have conspired to give him recurring bouts of angina. The damage to his muscle tissue is now irreversible, and although episodes of actual pain are brief, there is no escaping the pressure on his chest or his shortness of breath.

His faith is strong and idiosyncratic, manifesting itself in prayer, visits to shrines, religious music, and sacred verses written on paper and worn as amulets. All of these comfort him. He fears death, but not terribly so, and he awaits the opportunity to be reunited with his beloved much as certain young girls await, with a trepidation that does not quite exceed their longing, the loss of their virginity.

You find him lying on his cot, listening to a tinny yet soulful voice on a battery-powered radio because the electricity is gone and with it the power for your television. He is covered in a shawl, despite the heat, and he sweats lightly from his forehead. You bring him a cup of water and sit beside him, and he pats your hand, his callused palm leathery and almost soft. He whispers a benediction and breathes it into the air, spreading his hopes for you with a contraction of the lungs.

LIKE ALL BOOKS, THIS SELF-HELP BOOK IS A COCREATIVE project. When you watch a TV show or a movie, what you see looks like what it physically represents. A man looks like a man, a man with a large bicep looks like a man with a large bicep, and a man with a large bicep bearing the tattoo “Mama” looks like a man with a large bicep bearing the tattoo “Mama.”

But when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create. It’s in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book becomes one of a million different books, just as an egg becomes one of potentially a million different people when it’s approached by a hard-swimming and frisky school of sperm.

Readers don’t work for writers. They work for themselves. Therein, if you’ll excuse the admittedly biased tone, lies the richness of reading. And therein, as well, lies a pointer to richness elsewhere. Because if you truly want to become filthy rich in rising Asia, as we appear to have established that you do, then sooner or later you must work for yourself. The fruits of labor are delicious, but individually they’re not particularly fattening. So don’t share yours, and munch on those of others whenever you can.

In your case you’ve set up a small business, a workhorse S in the thunderous economic herd of what bankers and policy makers call SMEs. You operate out of a two-room rented accommodation you once shared with your father. Two rooms struck you as a well-earned luxury when he was alive. Now, were it not for the needs of your firm, they would have struck you as wasteful, and disconcerting besides, for even though you are a man in his mid-thirties, you have only recently been introduced to the types of silences that exist in a home with one occupant, and emotionally you stagger about this new reality like a sailor returned to land after decades at sea.

It is shortly before dawn. You sit alone on the edge of a cot that used to sleep your parents, rubbing the dreams from your skull as you listen to an oversexed neighborhood rooster crowing in his rooftop cage. You breakfast at a kiosk festooned with the logos of a global soft-drink brand, sipping tea and dipping your fingers into a plate of chickpeas. You are known to many of the men around you, and they nod in greeting, but you are not beckoned into any of the conversations taking place. No matter. Your mind is on the day’s work ahead, and as you chew and swallow you barely notice the tethered goat at your feet, with its jaunty, peroxide-bleached forelock, or the battle-scarred, toe-long beetle winding its way to a promising cat carcass.