When was the last time you had a moment of idleness? When you were totally disconnected from Facebook, twitter, Netflix, office mails, phone calls and just sat doing nothing. I would say most of us would not remember having such a moment since our childhood when sitting idle had its own charm. As a child, I would take endless bus and train journeys in the no-mobile and no-iPad era and still never got bored. When there was a power cut, our lives did not come to a standstill. I would sit on the porch and simply observe the passers-by. Much better if the power cut was in the night. I would look up at the night sky in awe and spot my favorite constellations. Waiting too wasn’t an inconvenience at all. Whether it was waiting in the bus queue, for the college lecture or for a friend who did not turn up on time for coffee. Idle time was a part and parcel of life.
Somehow along the way, we have come to believe that every moment must have a purpose that would be lost if we did not make the most of it. Everyone is always doing something. There is the latest Netflix series to be watched and the pictures of the last exotic vacation in Cambodia to be uploaded on Insta. Cult-fit session must be booked in advance to get that coveted dance class. Kids must be ferried to tennis classes and parents to the weekly satsangs (spiritual discourses). There are house parties to be thrown and attended. Even when people say they were ‘chilling’ on the weekend, it is not exactly a leisurely vista of legs perched on top of the balustrade and meaningless sky gazing. Chilling means depositing yourself before the ranting news channels while constantly scrolling through the social media, because there is also the Fear of Missing Out (fondly knows as ‘FOMO’). Idle time would never make it to the to-do list.
I am myself guilty of obsessing over time. What started as my dislike for wasting time soon turned into endless planning and rationing of time. I would time everything and freak out if things did not go as planned. While going back from office, I would get frustrated if the cab driver missed the U-turn for the longer yet less congested Jwala-mill road and took the right towards the Shankar Chowk where the traffic moved at snail’s pace. This means that an extra 20 minutes from my limited off-work time have been sacrificed. In the mornings, elevators were the objects of my frustration. The number of stops on the way to my floor could determine the mood of my day. Then there are Zomato, Swiggy, Amazon and Myntra delivery boys who seem to be unaware of google maps. Giving them directions deducts some precious minutes from my afternoon nap. The salons make you wait despite booking appointments in advance, but I have quickly learnt to fill the time gap by catching up on the social media gossip and the latest headline on ‘In-shorts’. There are also the internet-dish tv-AC-washing machine repair guys who must be accommodated within the already jam-packed weekend schedule. Even a few minutes delay could be the harbinger of the impending disaster – I could miss the first few minutes of my favourite movie in the theatre, or worse, I could miss that right size of the dress in the Shopper’s stop sale. And of-course, if my cleaning maid and cook – the two pillars of my life - don’t turn up as expected, my whole life goes haywire because washing utensils and cooking were never part of daily planner. This leads to the pre-arrival of Monday morning blues on Saturday itself.
My ‘on-work’ obsession with time is no less than my ‘off-work’ obsession. Unexpected meetings, presentations and calls that disturb my schedule vex me to no extent. Team members who fall back on deadlines are at the receiving end of my wrath. Basically, anything that makes me spend more time than necessary in office (though an everyday phenomenon) and eats into my off-work time is testimony to my fury. Over-time in office means less time for exercising, Netflix and other amateurish hobbies (including this blog).
One fine Saturday morning while admiring Julia Roberts in ‘Eat, Pray and Love’, I came across this Italian idiom hitherto unheard of (by me) – ‘Dolce Far Niente’, which reads as “the sweetness of doing nothing”. Isn’t it dumb? Here I am making lists over lists of how to squeeze each moment of the day, and these Italians think doing nothing is sweet.
But for a change, could doing nothing be sweet? What if I strike out some of the not-so-important items from the long parchment of to-dos and keep some idle time for myself. What if I can prioritise the most essential tasks and stop fretting over the non-accomplishment of the ones that are listed much further down the list. What if I don’t have to be a know-it-all; this way I can overcome my ‘FOMO’. What if every now and then I sip my evening tea staring aimlessly at the beautiful Aravalli range (or what is left of it) from my balcony, rather than being glued to the idiot box. What if I could be somewhere without being in a hurry to be somewhere else.
Essentially, I wondered, how difficult it would be to give myself a break. Sensex would not go crashing. Facebook will continue to remain blue. Traffic will not alleviate, neither will the pollution. Earth will still take 365 days to do a merry-go-round and news channels will continue yapping. Maybe it is fine to take that extra holiday and spend some idle time. Office can wait, so can the endless tryst with maids, delivery men and latest web series.
The race that I assume I am running against time is probably an illusion. If time is not linear and rather a loop, each step forward also takes me backward. So why race at all? Why not stop and smell that rose, or rain or new book or coffee? But don’t smell too hard if you are in Delhi as you might take in that extra harmful dose of PM 2.5.
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