Indolent Pleasures

I really do not know where human beings get these crazy notions. The one that has irked me all my life is this idea that somehow a person has to justify his/her existence by doing something. I mean, my own belief is that "I exist therefore I deserve to exist" but this commonsense notion seems to find disfavor with almost everyone. People keep asking me "But what do you do?" and my answer "I live" is considered absolutely insufficient if not downright insulting. It is this stupid notion that causes otherwise harmless people to go out into the world and create absurd things like bundled derivatives and cause untold harm and misery to large swathes of the population.

I have always been made of sterner stuff. I prefer to loll around in my sofa and take my ease. Unfortunately, the world does not need to convince me of its rightness in order to get me to work. All it has to do is to stop supplying me my food and other needs (to be frank, it never started) for me to have to get off my behind and toil at something. I offer as solid proof of the existence of brains inside my skull that I did not starve for more than a few hours before I realized that I would have to set aside some funds to feed myself before I started taking my ease.

Having set out with the clear intention of working just for long enough to ensure that I could have a modicum of comfort through the rest of my life, I did work for as long as eighteen years before I could bid goodbye to my forced adherence to the stupid notions of Society. Even as a child, I never had had the itch to boast of possessing the most marbles - so I did not fall into the pit of wanting to crow about having reached the top of whichever dunghill I had toiled in.

My annual visit to Delhi involves a visit to my erstwhile place of toil. Nothing gives as much joy to the slave as a visit to his place of enslavement when he knows that he is now irretrievably free. So, every time I visit my former office I feel a happiness akin to ecstasy. The funny thing is the sort of impression that I seem to have left behind. Can you believe that there are hordes of people there who actually believe that I am a workaholic and still refuse to accept - after seven years - that I could ever be capable of living a life of absolute indolence?

Thankfully, it does not require their belief now for me to loll around at home and watch with grave interest the procession of ants that is wending its way towards the sugar that I spilled and am too lazy to clean up. There are those who feel impelled to try to corner all the marbles in the world. I watch their antics with amused interest. There are those who work at bettering the lot of Society. I salute them without feeling any need to emulate their actions.

I have found my metier. Anyone who does something needs an appreciative audience. In a world of people scurrying around turning head-stands and cart-wheels, I am the only one who is prepared to sit around and applaud. I have my hands poised. Now, strut out your stuff!