The end-result of all things evil is always good. This paradox is, to an extent, similar to the prevailing ‘Lockdown’ situation. My wife and I are keeping a happy distance and our verbal exchanges verge almost on civility! Good, isn’t it? Her cooking has improved, not à la Godiwalla, but one looks forward to her three meals, a snack at four and some chavna at the happy hour (subject to the availability of the liquid amber gold). Great, Isn’t it?

Yours truly is supposed clean up the junk (my wife’s epithet) that was gathered over the years from my junkets abroad, from Chor Bazar, jari-puranawallas and the roadside vendors. I collect decanters, jugs, wall-plates and other such stuff. I’ll get down to ‘Operation Clean-up’ as soon as I condition myself to it, one of these days. 

My wife’s first reaction upon seeing any new purchase is, “OMG Darab!” (sans the ‘sha’). “Where are you going to keep this new monstrosity of yours??? Badhu dhur khaich, gathering dust, and when I tell you to clean up your precious junk, you pretend to be working on some ‘Masterpiece’ that you are forever writing!” Now, no more! No going out! No buying ‘beautiful things’ that might catch my eye in the shop-window or that might gather dust at home. So, everything is hunky-dory, sweet and civil, nice and easy-going at home-sweet-home!

Life couldn’t be better! I am an Idleist. Hold it, madam Editor, do not correct the spelling. It is not meant to be ‘idealist’. That I am not. I love to be ‘idle’ – hence ‘idleist’. My wife will vouch for that. 

Idleness is the mother of all great inventions. I have got straight this from the horses’ mouths! Late Agatha Christie, the queen of thrillers, wrote in her autobiography, “I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness, to save oneself trouble.”  There’s no refuting such an irrefutable authority!

The American sci-fi writer, Robert Heinlein, says something similar: “Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.” 

Henry Thoreau enjoins us to the freedom of living aimlessly, guided by the lights of our own desires rather than the world’s life-denying imperative of ‘incessant business’! 

And here is a gem, by the inimitable Oscar Wilde, “To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world!” 

The great thinker and philosopher, Lord Bertrand Russell, philosophizes, “Immense harm is caused by the belief that Work is Virtuous.” He goes on to validate it with, “A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power.”  

A goodish part of the world has advanced through idleness. Take for example, Isaac Newton, plain and simple Isaac Newton. It must have been a fine spring day worth lolling on the grassy patch underneath a spreading tree. That’s what he was doing. Idling away, perhaps dreaming happily of some comely English lass, when all of a sudden, an apple falls, either on him or besides him – that no historian can say. But the fact remains that an apple fell – a historic apple, which developed into his discovery of the Principles of Gravity and turned young Isaac into Sir Isaac Newton! And science students have to study his theories even today, over three hundred years later!

In 1928, Alexander Fleming had left Staphylococcus bacteria colonies in a petri dish. Later, he noticed that they were infected with the mould and no bacteria were growing around the mould. The mould turned out to be the strain of Penicillin notatum. And thus was discovered the then wonder-drug, penicillin! Would he have discovered it had he been particular enough to clean the Petri dish? He became Sir Alexander Fleming and even went on to win the Noble Prize! 

For the following theory of mine, had I lived during the dark ages, I would probably have been hung, drawn and quartered, or maybe burnt at the stake. But I do believe that our maker, our creator must have become a bit fidgety or bored after a timeless eternity of nothingness, and so he must have pressed some button to enjoy a ‘Big Bang’… and our Universe (or several of them) was born! 

I would like to end with yet another paradox… ‘If you sit idle long enough, you are bound to create something worthwhile!’