I have always been
amused by the 7 sins.
It is as if one Monday
morning the Gods assembled in a conference room, hired a team from Mckinsey who
came up with an optimal list the 7 bad things man could do. ”In Sum, If you
look at them, dear Gods, these sins are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive”
– the consultant might have summarized. And Gods, no doubt, nodded in
agreement and have used it as a reference checklist before making drastic
decisions like who to send to hell and the degree of punishment as depicted in
movies like Se7en and Anniyan/Aparachit. Please do notice how any new sin
beyond the 7 could be force fitted into one or more of the 7 sins thereby
making it robust and flexible model.
All of us have in one
way or the other breached the 7 sins, one at a time or all at the same time. We
have our pet sins for which we feel no guilt and go all virtuous moral policing
on the rest. We tolerate some sins of others and fume at them for the rest. Spending
half hour on moneycontrol.com makes one think Greed is
cool, half hour on YouTube comments section makes one think Wrath is the way to
go. lol!Troll! lol!
But then if one were
to experience all the 7 sins in half hour, then undoubtedly one's Facebook feed
is the best one stop destination.
On Facebook, I envy at
another’s promotion, his new shiny Audi (EMI in USA is much cheaper, I say!),I
then go into deep thought “I want a Audi too” there goes my newly found greed
ignoring bank loan fellow who might opine I cannot afford Alto also, that is
another matter. I experience immense gluttony over those close up shots
of cupcake pictures and fancy restaurant check-ins and “hubby cooking pasta for
wife, muah muah”pictures. Wrath over the sheer stupidity of “hubby
cooking pasta for wife, muah muah” pictures, I take immense pride in my
carefully photo-shopped happy vacation moment with missus, my smiling photos at
European cities on office money. And as per lust.. Hmm.. well yeah, you
are all screwed (Not me, not me.), when someone hacks into facebook and
releases all your maximum searched names. Then there is sloth which by
definition is very much spending aforementioned half hour on FB.
I strongly recommend a
monitoring of one’s pulse rate, heart rate, BP, cholesterol and sugar levels
when browsing Facebook. They may swing wildly like a Waqar Younis reversing on
a windy Lords evening.
I am digressing,
coming to the crux of my post. I have immense practice in sloth. 30 years to be
precise. I have been capable of not doing anything for long periods of time and
derive of a particular satisfaction in the activity. I have never had a sense
of guilt in just staring at a wall and visualizing songs into music videos --AR
Rahman used to release songs 1 month before movies, I have directed movies –
mostly never gone past first 5 minutes post introduction scene. I have won
numerous awards at a global scale, got super model girlfriends and even lived
in Malgudi briefly. All at the comfort of my couch or exam hall.
I am not saying I am
always 100% idler. I have had my moments of doing stuff, but only after a
satisfying bout of laziness. In its defense sloth is the most harmless of all
sins. One may not have done homework regularly or kept desk clean. But no major
calamity could be expected of a sloth based ideology. You don’t expect a lazy
person to actively take part in any ISIS projects or contest in an election
making decision for everyone else. Too much travel and talking involved.
But the world is not a
friendly place for Sloth-ers, one is expected to work and grow, take
responsibility and grow again, tick things of a to-do list and grow again and
again. It is an endless loop of conflict, of one’s yearning to smile
observantly Vs society’s expectations which is summed by taglines like ‘just do
it’ “Make it large” "nothing like anything" (what does that even mean?)
A man of a bystander,
spectator-like disposition is looked down up in a world of marathon runners,
trekkers, entrepreneurs, NGO do-gooders - look at those deodorant ads embodying
men full of action, Hrithik Roshan types. Isn’t the product meant for fellow
slob folks who don’t want to take bath?!?
Now when one
marries/is a son of/is a sibling of/works under/is a friend of/ a person whose
core philosophy is to display instant wrath on any visible sloth, of whom I am
generally a victim of, all’s not well in loungers paradise. Slowly
these folks affectionately rob you off your sexy-slow-motion-appeal and make you one of them
do-ers. We live in the age of T20 and Snapchat and Netflix – gone are the couch
potato days, it is all interactive, one has to search for the movie title and
make a decision as to what to watch. Even the celebrated social media bios go like "Blogger/Guitarist/trekker/social media expert/teacher/photographer" now imagine all of above emanating from insides of one person. Reading them only gives me a peculiar pain in the neck area and also lower abdomen.
I need to take rest.
Too much stress.
A rant is the need of the
hour.
There are some days when I work non stop till 9 PM (some days only- i repeat) and have to come home and watch an episode of a hyped TV show, and entertain the spouse girl, phone calls from family, work emails from inspired souls and tolerate all those whatsapp forwards giving no room for bumming alone. I Sleep. There i end it.
Finally,
for those of you who are looking for the point of this post, well, this post
does not address anything major in general, and does solve nothing in particular
.
It merely serves as a small tribute, addressing an endangered breed who deserve a pat on the back
and a soft pillow for committing the least harmful of all sins.
Chalo bye Off to
facebook now.
