The Nectar of Spending

The white cake with yellow candles glittered in the glow of their flames. People gathered around swayed on their feet in an euphoric state flashing all of their 32 teeth. The red letters - Eureka - looked as if blood had been spilled and by a miraculous coincidence had taken the form of the aforementioned word. And below it, a mathematical equation which seemed absurd.

“Everyone, behold, before us lies the equation of business.”

Everyone gawked.

“These few letters are the eternal truth. Taken together, it represents the metaphorical Fountain of Youth for our business.”

A pause. A moment of highly expectant silence.

“This equation that you see represents the blood and the sweat of our ginormous profits and even more ginormous nominal debt. Over the last so many years, we have starved ourselves of increments, bonuses so that all that saved money could go towards finding the equation.”

A pause. A moment of solemn silence.

“Now you may ask what does this equation represent even though you already know it. And, roll drums please, this is the equation which predicts the spending propensity of a person with 99% accuracy given their demographic, financial, ethnical and peer group parameters. A model which is the fruit of so much data - our own, scraped from the internet, stolen from others, their phones and have specialized agencies follow them physically, surveil their contacts and survey their neighbourhoods. By the way, how are we on the legal front?”

“It’s all good. We have included all forms of surveillance in our agreements which we get the customers to sign. Anyways, marketing team is working on a campaign - “I or India? Selfishness or GDP Growth?”.”

“That’s good. Now without any further ado or grandiose so that molten wax doesn’t form a layer over the cake, let’s all participate in cutting the cake - you can just clap while I cut it.”

A pause. A moment of expectant clapping.

“To infinite years of stupendous growth.”