u/Sweaty_Bat250

Rant ahead

I’m just a salaried guy in my 20s. I come from a normal lower middle class family and I know I’m privileged.
I got a good education, got a good job and now I earn a salary that my parents could never have imagined.

I’m not saying I’m poor. I know I’m lucky.

Today I was just checking my ITR refund because it hasn’t even gone into processing yet. While looking at my past filings, I suddenly noticed the total tax I had paid.
Around ₹26 lakh in direct income tax in just 4 years.

I honestly never thought about the number before. I always thought, I’m earning, I’m paying my taxes, I’m contributing to my country. I love my motherland and I’ll always be proud of it.

But seeing that number today just made me sad.

I don’t own a house. I don’t own land. I don’t even own a car.

I have a 2018 scooty.
I pay around ₹110/litre for petrol, and my scooter doesn’t properly support E20.

Every day I ride through pothole-filled roads. My suspension is damaged and my back has taken a beating because of sudden potholes.

When it rains, I get wet. Footpaths are broken or full of mud. Drainage water is on the road and gets splashed on me when vehicles pass.

Then traffic. I sit in traffic for hours.
Public transport isn’t exactly great either. Buses are packed, trains aren’t clean, and even the metro can mean standing for 40–45 minutes.

And this is not just about roads.

What about education? I took an education loan to study. I paid the loan back with interest. I’m genuinely lucky that I got the education and the job I have today, but shouldn’t basic quality education be something that every child can get without their parents having to spend lakhs?

I see colleagues talking about spending lakhs every year on their children’s education. In my entire 16 years of education, I don’t think my family spent anywhere close to what some people spend on a child in one year.

It honestly makes me scared to even think about having children.

And healthcare?

If tomorrow I lose my job, who is going to help me? How am I supposed to take care of my aging parents when hospitals can cost lakhs for a single serious illness?

I’m paying taxes, but I still need to build my own emergency fund, investments, insurance and retirement corpus because I know that if something goes seriously wrong, I have to take care of it myself.

So what are we building?

Are my taxes at least helping someone who is poor get out of poverty? Are children getting better education because of it? Are families getting healthcare? Are people getting better lives?

Because if not, then where is all this money going?

And yes, I know defence is a huge part of it. I want our soldiers to be protected. They are literally risking their lives for us. Seeing our soldiers getting k--led in attacks, especially from Pakistan, makes me very angry. They deserve better equipment, better support and every possible protection we can give them.

I’m not against paying taxes.

I actually want my taxes to mean something.
I want to feel that the money I’m paying is helping build a country where a poor child has a chance, where education doesn’t destroy a family financially, where my parents can get treatment without me worrying about losing everything, where roads don’t destroy my vehicle and where people can actually live with some dignity.

I know ranting on Reddit isn’t going to change anything.
But honestly, how do we change this? How do we survive?

I still love my country. I’ll always be proud of being Indian.

I’m just tired and sad today.

Hi,
My dad met a guy who said he is a member of a co-op society and can get us a 30x40 plot for 15 lakh( all white/bank transactions) near bannur road. We have to pay 5 lakh first and get registered then once they start the development we have to pay remaining 10 lakhs , and they will call for a lottery and we can pick and get whatever comes out of that chit. Development can take upto 2 years from now is what he said, and he is a well established guy and few other known people have also invested in it.

We never owned any property and this would be the first if we invest. I am against this as i feel bit sketchy about it but my dad is hell bent on investing in it. Does any one have any experiences on such things? Does any one have benefited from it? Am i thinking too much? Can someone please help me out here?

Tldr; is it safe in investing co-op society schemes/plots.

Watched Gramayana today. The last Kannada movie I watched in theatre was Kantara Chapter 1. I have very little hopes from KFI nowadays, but thought of giving this one a chance because I used to watch Vinay’s movies back in the 2010s.

I would say I’m not disappointed, maybe because I went in with very low expectations. It was a good watch, but honestly it could have been a lot lot better.

One thing I genuinely feel is that KFI doesn’t give enough importance or respect to writers. I found so many loose ends and loopholes in the story (won’t spoil anything here). There were many characters to handle and I feel the writing failed to balance them properly. Some characters don’t connect, some things don’t make sense, especially Yogi’s character. I still don’t understand why it was there.

Looks like they are planning a Part 2 from the post-climax scenes, so maybe they’ll explain more later, but as a standalone movie, many characters felt incomplete.
Vinay still needs to improve a lot in acting. Megha was good, but Gopal Deshpande completely carried this movie. What an actor! Truly a great find. He was just amazing throughout.

Songs didn’t work for me, but the BGM was good. Coming to cinematography, this was honestly the weakest part. The title card itself looked like it was in 360p. I don’t understand how they allowed that. Almost every aerial shot looked bad with no clarity at all. With the kind of village setup they had, they could have created magic visually, but sadly they missed that chance.

The ending monologue didn’t connect with me and many of Megha’s dialogues felt weak. That’s my review. Do watch it this weekend if you’re interested, because my Saturday show had less than 10 people and honestly I don’t know where KFI is heading.

I genuinely feel if the script was tighter, if the loose ends were connected better and the ending made more sense, this could have been a really great movie.
Nevertheless, it’s a good one-time watch. Family audiences who are waiting for Kannada movies can definitely give it a try.

PS - Used AI to reframe my sentences better :)

KFI is doomed. Please tell me he is not the producer of 666 ODT.