Abridged
I do not know who made up the list of the Seven Deadly Sins, probably the same person who made up the list of the Muses, but I can never remember the name of even one Muse, whereas I can rattle off four or five of the Deadly Sins off the top of my head, usually forgetting Pride and Wrath, the two sins I like to think I have conquered. (Actually, it’s not that I’ve conquered Pride, and if you don’t believe me, read Pride and Prejudice and tell me if you think there’s anything seriously wrong with that young woman). Of course the person who made up the Seven list left out Vanity, which everyone thinks is a Deadly Sin but isn’t, and who left out a large number of sins that these days people cheerfully admit to in a spirit that falls somewhere between charm and out-and-out bragging. Besides if you accuse someone of having a bad case of one of the Deadly Sins --- if you call him down and out lazy, or a greedy person or a fat pig --- it doesn’t really count for much. I know a man whose lust is truly out of control, but that failing fades entirely when weighed against his bullying, hectoring, arrogant stupidity. Stupidity; now that’s what I call a Deadly Sin. And here is a list of some more I have come across in a long life of watching many of our righteous countrymen and women. There are those who are constantly checking themselves in the mirror, talking in animal voices loud and nastily, breast-feeding at dinner parties, picking all the cashew-nuts out of the mixed nuts, breaking a date because something better has come up, and inviting a separate group of people to come after dinner. The types who seem to have forgotten the niceties of good behavior. The category we sometimes called the pseudos. As might be expected one comes across these types in most of our urban watering holes. We call these by that delightful but strangely out of place word, ‘pubs’. Modern urban India is reinventing the places where one can ‘chill out’, ‘freak out’ or just ‘party’. Aha but we are digressing. On to the Deadly Sin I have selected.
A MAN OF SLOTH. There are lots of men or even women of Sloth. All you have to do is look around carefully. They are every middle-class parent’s nightmare of their child turned giant ----undisciplined, unstructured or disorganized.
The culprits are wedded to their beds. The bed is a natural habitat. Prone is the preferred position. Mess is their hallmark. Their bedrooms are a nightmare, their workplaces like horror movies. Since the workplace is invariably next to the bedroom, work need not overly conflict with work time. One comes across this category of urban dweller a lot nowadays in our big cities. They read only in bed, stretched out, dozing periodically so that the dreams are caught up in the reading matter. Books and papers lie everywhere – unread, meant to be read, soon to be read, never to be read – papers on the bed, on the bed table, on the floor, under the bed.
A man of sloth has files of sloth. Their files lie in piles on top of cabinets. The drawing room table lies under a pile of books that litter the place, the dirty transistor radio long dead, the batteries long leaked out, the dirty coffee cup never washed and old stains from a myriad of sources wrestling for space on the study table. He is the hypothetical author who writes supposedly for a living, so everything gets swept under the bed when its time to churn out another piece for the papers.
Such men and women are what I call newspaper and magazine pack rats. The latest, well not really latest Cosmopolitan, lies half-open with a planned article for possible use to plagiarize. Our authors, well some of them are really fairly efficient copycats. There are hardly any original writers left nowadays; you are either a bad copycat or a good one. Take your pick. Are some of my compatriots reading this?. A man of sloth hates the phone. The phone is somebody who wants you to do something. The sloth has lots of things not to do. They hate the mail. Now it’s the email. They do not read it, they just hide it or better still misplace it. Once every two months when the state electricity board threatens to cut off the electricity, or the Phone Company the phone, the sloth then tries to find that misplaced bill or the chequebook to try and write out the correct amount. Many sloths are late bill payers, and eventually someone else makes good the debt they owe. The problem is that in corporate India we have to pay by cash. The new plastic money payment method is still in its infancy. Gone are the days of payment by cheque, well can one really trust anyone anymore?.
At regular intervals the spouse of the sloth or his mother or other family members scream at him to change. The sloth promises to do so. What a lie. To men and women of sloth the concept of change is less than a joke – it has no meaning. Without inherited wealth, sloth is not easy to maintain. It calls for passion, dedication, and, ironically hard work. But hard work that some are good at is very close to play, and well practiced play crosses back and forth into sloth, with no one but the player any the wiser. So most rich men and women get away with it. Well dear reader have you got the direction I am talking about. Do something instead of just ‘enjoying’ your inheritance. It’s a real disease this problem of being a sloth. Enjoy.
Sukhi
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