New Delhi, June 9 -- Let us ask something uncomfortable for us.

If the salary stopped tomorrow, not because of a job loss, but by choice, how long could we actually live the life we're living today?

A month? Six months? A year?

For most high-earning professionals in urban India, that question lands harder than it should. And that's the problem nobody is talking about loudly enough.

We have built a generation of remarkable earners. Technology, financial services, consulting, startups, these industries have handed younger Indians paychecks their parents couldn't have imagined in their most optimistic dreams. A 28-year-old today can earn what took their father a lifetime to reach.

And yet.

Despite those salaries, despite those incremen...