Life of my frugal friend who escaped rat race unknowingly
let call my friend as rakesh
I knew rakesh was my classmate but we were not friends. after 4-5 years, i met him in mall it took some time to recognize him. after i came to know that he lives 3-4km nearby my office so we used to meet at chai ki tapri for chitchats and talking about our college days, i came to know he works as software engineer in unknown company with package 4-5 LPA (he didn't told me exact figure) and approx. 2-3 years ago when he had low salary he got PM awas yojana apartment which is i think subsidized home by government.
he told me job is not stressful. every weekend they go outside, loan on subsidized home will come to end next year. after ending loan, he is thinking about buying small kirana store and want to leave software engineering. his wife have teaching government job in rural area school.
he has achieved peace without earning crores or FIRE. he likes to read books. so, he has took subscription of local library. he lives simple and peaceful life. he tell me he most of the time use public bus to save up money, never went private hospital, many expensive operations has done in his family in government hospital due to certain kind of government card they have
and here I'm stucked with dumb manager telling me to memorize the codebase, toxic co-workers, full of politics. i'm not getting even time for my hobbies
sometimes, i think in country like india it is better to have low paying jobs you can buy any subsidized things and use government services