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There is nothing like Pure Laziness….all laziness is work-specific. And what appears to be laziness may indeed be incessant activity….like that of the sleeping top. Those who speak ill of laziness are ill-advised, to say the least.
Compared with the busy bees, drones are proverbially the laziest in the insect species. But they do serve a noble purpose beyond the ability of bees. Anyone who read Maeterlinck’s ‘The Life of the Bee’ would like to be the fortunate drone rather than the worker bee. The chosen drone does only one thing in its blessed life….mating with the Virgin Queen mid-flight and dropping dead. An act which is the consummation of all sacrifice and virtue to keep the family going.
Among our epic folks Kumbhakarn of Ramayan appears to be lazy and slothful but anyone who read the epic between the lines would realize that in spite of his curse he was much wiser than his brother Ravan.
There is really no simple word which is the exact opposite of laziness (I Googled for it and the nearest is activity..a poor substitute). The ant is proverbially the symbol of unceasing activity. But what does it achieve? I am told by the learned poets that the anthills they build are home to serpents. And anyone who read Maugham’s ‘Ant and the Grasshopper’ would rather be the lazy grasshopper than the ant. Maugham also wrote a wonderful story, ‘The Verger’, in which an illiterate who declined to learn reading and writing becomes a millionaire just by virtue of his choice not to learn.
That brings me to the work-specificity of so-called laziness. Some people who appear to be lazy most of the time suddenly become active when something interests them. Sherlock Holmes is the typical lazy bum, fiddling with his violin and getting dopy on his cocaine prick, but he is really charging his batteries for the next burst of relentless activity. He has an elder brother called Mycroft Holmes who is more talented than Sherlock but too ‘lazy’ to do detective work; but Sherlock has to appeal to him for clues when he himself is at a loss after his legwork.
In my experience my Ph. D. guide SDM was physically the laziest I have ever seen. He wisely chose a vocation that suits his laziness….Theoretical Physics. That requires no overalls and dirtying his hands with lab work. Indeed he was too lazy to use his leaky fountain pen. He would sit, stare, do a long calculation in his head and would grudgingly jot down the result on paper. But when he was visited by an admirer, he would drivel incessantly without giving a chance to the other. He once explained the reason to me: he could calculate in his head when he was talking…but not while listening. When he joined IIT KGP, many invited him with family to their homes for a social call. Within weeks he stopped visiting. He told me his reason charmingly: ‘I enjoy visiting people’s homes…but the drawback is that they return my visits’.
When I was younger, I keenly used to look forward to ‘doing’ the ‘Jumble’ (the word-picture puzzle in the daily newspaper). I would pick up my pen and turn to the Crossword Page and write up the four unscrambled words in the margin and do the final un-jumbling with a triumphant feeling. Nowadays I read the newspaper lying supine in my bed and so feel too lazy to get up, pick up a pen, write the words etc. Instead, I do the whole thing in my head….a pleasing accomplishment at my age (66+).
My son takes 3 hours of doing nothing after getting up from sleep and before walking to his job. I often wonder why their Company is paying a fat amount to this lazy lubber. Once I happened to read a testimonial from one of his juniors in his Peer Appraisal. It read that this lazy lubber can conduct an online meeting with his US customers for six continuous hours sitting in his chair without getting up, while the Americans on the other side and his team-mates here do job-rotating at least thrice during that time.
And my wife who works like a busy bee in her kitchen day in and day out (she loves it) refuses to give me her shopping list on a piece of paper because she is too lazy to pick up pen and paper.
And those who read this though are the laziest of all…no other worthwhile work?
...Posted by Ishani
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There is nothing like Pure Laziness….all laziness is work-specific. And what appears to be laziness may indeed be incessant activity….like that of the sleeping top. Those who speak ill of laziness are ill-advised, to say the least.
Compared with the busy bees, drones are proverbially the laziest in the insect species. But they do serve a noble purpose beyond the ability of bees. Anyone who read Maeterlinck’s ‘The Life of the Bee’ would like to be the fortunate drone rather than the worker bee. The chosen drone does only one thing in its blessed life….mating with the Virgin Queen mid-flight and dropping dead. An act which is the consummation of all sacrifice and virtue to keep the family going.
Among our epic folks Kumbhakarn of Ramayan appears to be lazy and slothful but anyone who read the epic between the lines would realize that in spite of his curse he was much wiser than his brother Ravan.
There is really no simple word which is the exact opposite of laziness (I Googled for it and the nearest is activity..a poor substitute). The ant is proverbially the symbol of unceasing activity. But what does it achieve? I am told by the learned poets that the anthills they build are home to serpents. And anyone who read Maugham’s ‘Ant and the Grasshopper’ would rather be the lazy grasshopper than the ant. Maugham also wrote a wonderful story, ‘The Verger’, in which an illiterate who declined to learn reading and writing becomes a millionaire just by virtue of his choice not to learn.
That brings me to the work-specificity of so-called laziness. Some people who appear to be lazy most of the time suddenly become active when something interests them. Sherlock Holmes is the typical lazy bum, fiddling with his violin and getting dopy on his cocaine prick, but he is really charging his batteries for the next burst of relentless activity. He has an elder brother called Mycroft Holmes who is more talented than Sherlock but too ‘lazy’ to do detective work; but Sherlock has to appeal to him for clues when he himself is at a loss after his legwork.
In my experience my Ph. D. guide SDM was physically the laziest I have ever seen. He wisely chose a vocation that suits his laziness….Theoretical Physics. That requires no overalls and dirtying his hands with lab work. Indeed he was too lazy to use his leaky fountain pen. He would sit, stare, do a long calculation in his head and would grudgingly jot down the result on paper. But when he was visited by an admirer, he would drivel incessantly without giving a chance to the other. He once explained the reason to me: he could calculate in his head when he was talking…but not while listening. When he joined IIT KGP, many invited him with family to their homes for a social call. Within weeks he stopped visiting. He told me his reason charmingly: ‘I enjoy visiting people’s homes…but the drawback is that they return my visits’.
When I was younger, I keenly used to look forward to ‘doing’ the ‘Jumble’ (the word-picture puzzle in the daily newspaper). I would pick up my pen and turn to the Crossword Page and write up the four unscrambled words in the margin and do the final un-jumbling with a triumphant feeling. Nowadays I read the newspaper lying supine in my bed and so feel too lazy to get up, pick up a pen, write the words etc. Instead, I do the whole thing in my head….a pleasing accomplishment at my age (66+).
My son takes 3 hours of doing nothing after getting up from sleep and before walking to his job. I often wonder why their Company is paying a fat amount to this lazy lubber. Once I happened to read a testimonial from one of his juniors in his Peer Appraisal. It read that this lazy lubber can conduct an online meeting with his US customers for six continuous hours sitting in his chair without getting up, while the Americans on the other side and his team-mates here do job-rotating at least thrice during that time.
And my wife who works like a busy bee in her kitchen day in and day out (she loves it) refuses to give me her shopping list on a piece of paper because she is too lazy to pick up pen and paper.
And those who read this though are the laziest of all…no other worthwhile work?
...Posted by Ishani
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Dear Sir,
ReplyDeleteThe starting line in this post reminded me a quote Pratik Sir had told me on a rainy evening in his office. I cannot resist to re-quote that here!! :)
If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
--- Lin Yutang
source: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/lin_yutang.html
Pratik-sir is the most widely read person I was lucky to befriend. This quote and three others occur in his touching Foreword to the Third Ishani Booklet. You can try and borrow a copy from him. He had got ten copies of the booklet as the default sweetener for every Foreword-Writer. The Fifth Ishani boooklet is long overdue. If you and /or your friends would like to write a Foreword, I will be happy to select 15 pieces of general interest from the blogs posted after April 2011; you can select 5; and I will get the 20 essays printed as the next Ishani booklet; and you will get 10 free copies. You can consult Pratik-sir how to go about it. Fine!
ReplyDeleteDear Sir,
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot!! But sir, I am a reader not a writer. Besides, my knowledge of english language and literature is very very poor. I do not posses the minimum qualification to write a foreword for your "bloglet" (blogs transformed into booklet)! But surely I can send you a list of my favorite 5 posted after April, 2011.
That would be great!
ReplyDelete