AID-India Conference 99, Chennai
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What does money buy? 
Ravi Kuchimanchi

 
Does money buy happiness?
   we've asked and answered.
Then what does it buy?
   More money, surely, but what else?
    food from someone else's plate?
     Surely not, food’s enough to trash!
      garbage space in another's yard then?
 Or material things, a romantic gift perhaps?
      What about the mood, the atmosphere?
Or is that not a matter…

Can money buy atmosphere?
    Surely it doesn't have a price
     just as happiness doesn't.
  But money can buy a car?
   Car can pollute air?
   More money builds a factory
      and buys more air!
    Factories make money?
      Become MNCs?
       Need cheap oil?
        Take defense contracts
            and make the economy  war.

What can money buy?
 There must be a limit
   But what if it is the sky?
If money buys money
  and money buys air
   shouldn’t we be concerned
    about the entire atmosphere?
Sooner or later
it is sold out…
  on the christmas eve
   when no mouse shall stir
    the nuclear winter night.

Does money buy happiness?
we've asked and answered
It's there in the classics,
the sight of the setting sun
the fragnance in the air
moods that make us happy
are not up for sale.

But with today's money there's
smell of mushrooms in our air,
Surely today, money can buy happiness
.....it can  buy our happiness.