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Stare-way to heaven

Abnormal, adj: Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested ~ Ambrose Bierce.

Today, I shall indulge in my favourite theme: Myself.

I'm a person with infinite leisure. I watch people scurrying to places of work. And weary home-bound women battling at bus-stops, in a rush to roll out the evening meal. I observe without a trace of guilt. There was a time when I balked at attending parties: It meant meeting somebody who'd naturally ask, "So, what do you do?", and I'd hum and haw. After which, a note of condescension would unfailingly creep into the conversation. That is, if it continued at all.

It's certain that there's a universal and tacit disapproval towards those who choose to steer clear of "gainful employment". A gaggle of women enjoying a kitty-party luncheon on a week-day invariably invites a chorus of disapproval: "Imagine reserving a regular day and time for nothing else but gossip!" Given half the chance, the chap entertaining a business colleague, or the smart young thing interviewing her victim over lunch, would do nothing much different. Therein lies the crux. Most of us simply can't afford to do that which we'd really like. Hence the conscious belittling of those who can. I can't help but feel that it stems from the subliminal sour-grapes syndrome.

I am, sadly, not of the kitty-party clique. Not only because I'm a horror at cards, but also 'cause I simply cannot suffer the same faces every week, for months together. I'm not, what's known as, a People-Person, either. Moreover, I've an innate horror of keeping appointments. If that weren't enough, I have an askew biological clock: My natural sleeping hours begin just before India's morning alarm sounds. Which puts paid to any suggestions of holding a job. The concept of flexitime has recently been introduced in offices in the US, and will take an eon to reach here. Not that I ever tried for a nine-to-five... Getting through college was bad enough.

At school, I was fully awake only during English Literature, when the topic was a Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde scather. Their iconoclasm and eccentricity, I understood, and felt glad that my teachers and fellow-students appreciated it. However, I soon realised that the same kind of "understanding" would never be extended to me. It was a theoretic sympathy, confined to dead authors and live paper-characters. Adults are benign to peculiar lifestyles and radical thoughts only when limited to the landed gentry in the pages of P G Wodehouse.

It took me a good quarter of a century to train my folks into accepting me, warts and all. I sympathised with them in the matter of how they'd explain me to their friends, but firmly rejected any compromise in my own routine... After I wake up in the late afternoon, my schedule includes:

1. doing the daily crosswords over a long glass of tea;
2. musing over mind-games, mouth stuffed with paan;
3. rearranging books on shelves;
4. showing an interest in what the cook's been doing;
5. phoning friends at work and jeering at their plight;
6. watching soccer on the idiot box or listening to music;
7. scribbling away an article to aggravate readers; and,
8. Thinking and Broadening my mind.

By which time, the rest of the house is ready to sleep, thus leaving me free for:

1. reading without interruption;
2. chatting by email; and
3. just pottering about in the soothing dark.

Browsing through bookshops, video libraries and software dens are my other occupations.

Sometimes, I may be forced to locate a plumber or an electrician, for which I may stay awake till late morning so as to catch them during "normal" working hours. Convincing them of either the magnitude of the spontaneous puddle under the cupboard, or the blue flickering in the mains switchboard, usually turns out to be a waste of time. So, mostly, I don't bother.

My daydreams, centred as they are around agreeable pursuits, are the same as the rest of humanity's: I imagine making -- rather, I imagine my folks making -- so much money that I can have The New York Times flown in daily for its ball-breaking crossword. Or being able to fly out for wanton weekends to San Francisco. Sometimes, I long to be a forgotten sheikha in a harem: stretched out on a divan, smoking a hookah and watching the latest Tarantino in my private cinema. Dream on...

The point is that I can, so far, afford to dream all day. I've no pressing need to pay for my upkeep, hoard for my non-existent children, or provide for retired parents. Men and women react to my (what they think of as slothful) lifestyle in slightly different ways:

My girlfriends, more likely than not, make feminism the issue: The presumption is the waste of Feminine Power to change things. They say that I'll never taste freedom till I've driven a car. Thank you, but I prefer to be chauffeured -- ask any industrialist with his Mercedes stalled in the traffic. Or they say that I'm a victim of timeless stereotyping; that I'm weakening the moral fibre of Modern Womanhood; that I'm no better than a kept woman... I say, Bosh. Tell that to those frail women bent over rice-saplings in the paddy-fields, while their kaarbhaaris enjoy feni in the shade. If Women's Lib means sinking further into the morass of drudgery, then best of luck to you. I've come a long way, baby: It's you who's regressing...

The customary counter-argument from men is mainly lofty, revolving around almost the metaphysical -- along the lines of "leaving an imprint on the sands of time". With them, the presumption is of a Talent Wasted. I can only quote the words of another solipsist: "In the long run, we are all dead". I do believe that all footprints are eventually washed away with the tide... Nothing is worth it if you'd rather be somewhere else...

Tell me, *why* must I have ambition? The OED defines it as "an ardent desire for distinction". Doesn't that reek of a hunger to show off and prove oneself? Which logically means that the ambitious are in doubt of their own capabilities...

Yet others will argue that one toils to make a qualitative difference to life in general, and that the nation benefits from more productive hands; that every human being must work, work, work... I beg to differ. What this country needs is more people like me who sit at home and present their needy/ambitious spouses a chance/motivation for self-esteem. The most harmful babes are those who block medical college seats, and then retire into obscurity the minute they get a marital opening. And, need I really say anything about that legion of male bureaucrats who simply shuffle files around the desk, waiting for the inevitable day of retirement?

The Joy of Labour has been so sublimated that people who don't have even a nodding acquaintance with the Bhagwad Gita are familiar with the shlok, Karmanye vaadhika raste... (work for its own sake, without expectation of rewards). The much-hated motto of my own school was "Work is Worship". Well, fiddle-dee-dee, even Mother Theresa in her charitable calling had one eye on prospective converts to her faith... Do not tell me that the motivation for ad execs is the welfare of humanity. Painters, actors feel they must be seen, authors want to be read, singers need to be heard... Well, I respect their vision of being "called". All I ask is that respect mine. Everyone is selling something. Why must I?

The negative way in which people view my ilk (oh yes, there are many like me), rises from an inability to understand how we can get through life without "doing anything". There have been suggestions that if I do not want to "work-work", I should at least do charity work or social service: The implication being that I must keep myself occupied.

Apart from the fact that I see no difference in the equally distasteful choices, there's a prime fallacy of reasoning -- ie, if I am doing nothing *obvious* to better my own or mankind's lot, then I am rotting away...

We are all, without exception, like sharks: The moment we stop moving, we die. It's not my fault that you can't fathom my movements. Nor is it my desire to make you do so. What you think of as your recreation, is my opportunity... For, very frankly, "A variety of Nothing is far better than a monotony of Something".

And honestly now, which one of you doesn't want to be in that swain's shoes who lucked up by selling Hotmail to Microsoft, and needn't do anything else ever again...? Ah! Permanent leisure...

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