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WESTERN tradition has given work a bad deal. This
goes back to Adam and Eve. Their idyll in Eden ends when they listen to the
serpent and eat the fruit of knowledge disobeying God. He curses them
and their progeny to live by the "sweat of their brow". One moral for modern
times could be : ignore the whispering in the wood; pray in the Chappell if
you want to play at Eden Gardens!
A Sumerian myth provides a more
plausible twist to the Biblical story : the senior gods spend their time in
leisure, while the junior gods have to labour at tasks like digging up
canals, planting crops and tending the gardens. Eventually, the junior gods
rebel against work and their life of unending drudgery. They threaten to
overturn the heavenly order.
That's when the senior god Enki goes on to creating the first man
from clay. Sumerian Adam is the original "Fall Guy", someone who has to work
so that the gods or the bosses can play! Now all that work and no play do
mark Adam and his kin very dull indeed. Which may explain why so many people
love to hate work ( or the soul-killing toil opposed to play).
By the same token, most of us harbour fantasies of walking away
from 'work' to pursue a dream of our own, at our leisure. But not everybody
gets to turn that into reality as Sunil Mittal, Bharti Airtel CEO, has done
at 50. Just as Bill Gates did at Microsoft a few years ago, Mr. Mittal is
opting out of the daily nittygritty of managing his companies, to focus on
"mentoring, strategy and governance."
His retirement is hardly a retreat to the dwindling forest on the
Delhi Ridge. But one is tempted to term it 'Vanaprastha at 50,' which marks
the most mature phase of life's journey envisioned in the four ashramas of
the Indian tradition. This begins with the student in his bachelor digs.
Then comes the householder and his family--- whom companies such as Airtel
just love to dote on--- followed by the grey eminence phase that goes back
to the basics, in harmony with nature and environment.
You can opt out of these stages at any time, as Adi Shankara or
the Buddha did, for the finale. Self-actualisation also marks the pinnacle
of human hierarchy of needs portrayed by psychologist Abraham Maslow. That
also comes after your basic hungers and drives have been met. that's when
you itch for biggest goal of all. |
