Let us take a long, deep look at the latest masterpiece of our failing world. It is not a new clean energy source. It is not a way to fix the climate. No, it is a watch. But it is not a watch that just tells the time. That would be too simple for a billionaire. This is a $1.5 million watch made for Anant Ambani. It is a watch that features tiny, gold statues of a lion and a white tiger. Why? Because he has a private zoo, and apparently, he cannot go five minutes without being reminded of it. It is the perfect symbol for our times. The world is burning, and we are busy making tiny golden cats for people who already own the real ones.

I have lived long enough to see many silly things, but this really takes the prize. I told you this would happen. When people get so much money that they forget what it is like to be human, they start buying things that look like toys for giant babies. This watch is the ultimate toy. It comes from a luxury watchmaker who probably laughed all the way to the bank. They know that if you put enough gold on something and call it 'exclusive,' a billionaire will buy it. They do not even need to hide their disdain anymore. They just build a tiny jungle inside a gold case and charge the price of a hundred houses for it. It is surgical in its greed, and I almost have to respect it.

Think about the logic for a second. You are one of the richest people in the world. You have already had a wedding celebration that lasted longer than some marriages. You have every car, every house, and every animal you could ever want. What is left? The answer is simple: you buy a watch that screams 'I am richer than you' in a language even a child can understand. You do not need a watch to tell the time. You have people to tell you what time it is. You have a schedule that the rest of the world has to follow. You buy this watch because you want to carry your ego on your arm. The lion and the tiger are not there for art. They are there to tell everyone else that you own nature itself.

This is what I call the theater of the absurd. We have millions of people who cannot afford a basic meal, yet we are reading news about a watch that costs more than most people will earn in their entire lives. And it is not even a pretty watch. It is heavy, it is flashy, and it looks like something you would find in a gift shop at a very expensive theme park. But that is the point of being this rich. You do not have to have taste. You just have to have a checkbook. The rest of us are expected to look at this and be amazed. We are supposed to find it impressive. But I find it exhausting. It is just another example of how far we have fallen from having any sense of what actually matters.

I find a special kind of joy in looking at the people who make these things. These watchmakers are masters of their craft, and they spend hundreds of hours making a tiny gold lion. They are very smart people using their brains to help a billionaire show off. It is a waste of human talent, but it pays well. It is a perfect cycle of nonsense. The billionaire wants to feel special, the company wants his money, and we are the audience watching the whole thing. It is like a play where everyone knows the lines are stupid, but they keep acting anyway because the theater is so fancy. I have seen this play before, and the ending is never good.

We live in a world where a private zoo is not enough. You need the watch to match the zoo. Maybe next week he will buy a pair of shoes that look like his favorite elephants. Or maybe a hat that has a working fountain. There is no limit to this kind of behavior because nobody ever says 'no' to a person with that much money. We have created a class of people who live in a different reality. In their reality, a $1.5 million watch with cats on it is a sensible purchase. In our reality, it is a sign that the system is broken beyond repair. But don't worry, at least we know exactly what time the world is ending. It is being timed by a very expensive, very shiny lion.