The Daily Rupee, from The IndiaPay Times satire desk. This is satire.
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₹94.64FREMONT, CA. A local uncle spent Wednesday evening comparing a US high-yield savings account with an NRE fixed deposit on the lid of a sweets box, then announced his conclusion to the household: “Both are good,” family members confirmed.
“Dollar side, this much. Rupee side, that much,” he said, tapping the lid with a ballpoint pen. “But then you convert back, so it is different. But then you convert again, so it is same. Let me do once more.”
The comparison began at 7:15 PM and ran through three sheets of paper, a calculator app, and the back of an electricity bill. By 9 PM the sweets box lid had been retired and the work moved to a spreadsheet with tabs named “Compare,” “Compare 2,” and “Final.”
“Final is the fourth tab,” said his wife, who asked to be identified only as the person who makes the tea. “So it is not final.”
Sometime during the evening, his mother, writing from India, forwarded a photograph of a gold coin to the family WhatsApp group with the caption “This is also option.” She followed with a second message asking whether he had eaten. Neither message was a response to anything.
Word also reached the group that Sharma Ji’s son keeps his savings in “something in Singapore,” a location no one has verified and everyone has repeated.
The uncle was reportedly unbothered. “He has his Singapore, I have my spreadsheet,” he said, and added a fifth tab.
A senior researcher at an institute nobody could name said the uncle is showing signs of what he called comparison fatigue, a condition in which a person studies two options so carefully that the comparison becomes the main activity. “It earns nothing, but it is very busy,” the researcher said. “Many households run on it.”
By Thursday morning, the uncle had reached a decision. He would decide “after Diwali, when the mind is fresh.” He then set a calendar reminder to review the entire matter again next year, titled “Compare (Final).”
At press time, the money in question remained in a checking account, where it has been since spring, earning what his wife described as “a lot of respect.”
Not satire: if you are weighing an NRE fixed deposit against savings in the US, here is what rupee depreciation really does to the comparison. Our guide, Rupee Depreciation: What It Really Does to Your NRE FD and India Savings, has the real numbers.
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