Who wants to be a billionaire?

Not all billionaires are profligate spenders who want to buy yachts and planes and live life king-size, indulging in every fantasy they ever had. Some of them are pretty tight-fisted with their money

The thing about billionaires is that they are just like you and me, but with every thing magnified a billion times over. Anxiety, ambition, greed, triumph, success, and satiation - try and multiply these by that unmistakable nine-digit figure and you have your average garden-variety billionaire.

Now imagine this person, with all these emotions amplified, in his Mercedes E-Class, caught in a traffic jam, waiting endlessly at a traffic light, cheek-by-jowl with two wheelers, handcart pushers. Imagine the level of frustration and anger as seconds tick by and he is late for a meeting with his banker to discuss a buyout. You wouldn't want to swap places with the guy, believe me.

Being a billionaire is not a bed of roses. Even with all that money and power at their disposal, they not only have to deal with the every day mundane human emotions that we all have, but they also have the challenges of living in a country legendary for its chaos and confusion.

And what's more, there are other factors - like people's expectations of them and how they should live. Not all billionaires are profligate spenders who want to buy yachts and planes and live life king-size, indulging in every fantasy they ever had.

Some of them, actually most of those I know, are pretty tight fisted with their money, and some, downright mean.

And that's because, like a woman obsessed with her beauty and who's eternally tending to it because it is her only calling card, a billionaire feels he ought to hang on to every cent he has.

Now, given that his list of friends, relatives and hangers-on increased the moment he made it to the billionaires' list, a billionaire has his job cut out for himself - not a day passes when he doesn't have to disappoint some one or the other who expects him to part with his much loved stash. In human terms, that makes for pretty fraught human relations.

What's worse is the media. Most hacks outside the pink papers don't know how to spell billion. let alone count the zeroes in it.

All they know is that a billionaire is 'mighty rich'. So if he doesn't live up to their image he's stingy. But if he does indulge in his fantasies he's flamboyant, high-rolling, showy and loud.

I have met wives of billionaires who've told me that all the fun of retail is lost to them. "I once used to love to shop and look for bargains," said one sweet, ditzy billionaire wife. "But what fun is it now when I can afford every thing - the whole shop - if I want?" And of course, she's right. Take away the satisfaction of finding a bargain from a woman and you are left with a pretty sorry situation.

But those aren't all the woes of a woman married to a billionaire - she's constantly worrying that some hard-nosed gold-digger is going to seduce her husband away. "I live in constant fear" she confided to a friend. "I have to look good, work harder and keep up with him constantly to ward off the competition".

And that's just half of the neurosis in the billionaire's home.

Because each morning the Master of the Universe searches his mirror while shaving: "Does she love me for myself? Or does she love me for my billions?" he asks.

Tchhah! What a life!

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com