No joy with mouse? Try cow

Born Free

When software engineer Rajesh Sharma read Matthew B Crawfords book Shop Class as Soulcraft An Inquiry into the Value of Work, he connected with it immediately. In that much-discussed book, Crawford eulogises manual work or practical activity which was once quite common but is now receding as office work or white-collar jobs are becoming more important and considered to bestow a higher social status and professional standing. Today, the knowledge worker is generally considered superior to the one doing a mechanical job.

However, for many who spend hours at the workplace in cubicles or at desk jobs, their work no doubt brings in the bread and butter and the several good things of life that money can buy, but also leaves them feeling slightly unfulfilled and empty. Devoid of actual physical work and the satisfaction of using ones hands, it sometimes feels more enervating than fulfilling.

Rajesh had been through that stage and found his own solution. A gold-medallist from a prestigious institute, and employed with a leading software company, Rajesh had been experiencing a niggling sense of emptiness at work. One day, a friend gifted him two indoor plants which he placed casually in his work-station. Their steady growth looked and felt good to him everyday. So, two years and a promotion later, when he moved into his own roomy cabin, he got a dozen indoor plants and insisted on watering and pruning them himself, much to the amusement of the peon who was also secretly relieved!

When Rajesh set up his own IT company five years later, he converted about 600 sq ft of the plots bare ground into an organic garden. He arrives an hour early and tends to it, and also during lunch-break and before leaving for home.

He says, Of course, I love my job and am grateful for my professional progress. But working with my hands and seeing the garden grow and flourish (the produce is donated to an old-age home) has given me a sense of satisfaction which my career achievements cannot match.

Psychologists say the gradual mechanisation of life has led to reduced physical activity. In the olden days, most men worked in fields and walked to and from work, while women had many physical chores in the house or in the farm.

Even children who indulged in vigorous physical activity are no longer getting enough of it. Today, they are burdened with lots of reading and writing in school and back home too through homework. Computer and TV video games have become integral parts of their lives. This had led both to unhealthy, sedentary lifestyles and a sense of emptiness that comes from not using the hands we were made to use for work.

Dr Vikram Prabhu, psychiatrist, says: Intellectual activity such as that indulged in by knowledge workers can be fulfilling but only partly so. One also needs to find an outlet for physical energy and to exercise the body. So, a lot of executives who do desk jobs often find drawn to do manual work over weekends. So, some of them indulge in cooking, others in making furniture while some do clay-modelling or pottery. I also know many knowledge workers who head to their farm houses on weekends and do actual physical work over there. One of them has his own vineyard where he insists on doing several physical chores himself.

Adithya Raghavan, Associate Manager, Sales, at a leading engineering-design company would agree completely. He develops and presents strategies on various corporate offerings related to design and research. My job is a full-time desk job, he reveals. After five days of this, every weekend he takes off to his fathers farm and goes to serve God in cows. He spends time washing the cows, handling their health checkups, ensuring their fitness, maintenance of their sheds, and procuring of the right fodder. And that is not as easy as it sounds. The market has adulterated fodder so it is a challenge to find the right cereals, and also provide hand-harvested hay since cows dont like the machine-harvested variety, besides securing tapioca which is a delicacy for the cow. Adithya also collects dung deposits and puts them back as manure for the field.

So, what does Adithya get out of this? Spending time with the cows helps develop vitality and strikes a wonderful balance between the environment at my work and personal life. Working with my hands gives me a great outlet for my physical energy. The feeling of joy in seeing cows looking healthy and well-fed and especially the expression on their faces when they lift their heads after finishing a barrel of good cereal mix is something no success at the job can give. This also keeps me physically fit and carries me to another week at work, all refreshed, he says.

Dr Seema Mehrotra, Associate Professor, Depart-ment of Mental Health and Social Psychology, NIMHANS, says: For any given individual, the centrality of work in his/ her life, the values that he she seeks in work and the extent to which the work-experience matches these would shape the extent to which one derives a sense of fulfilment and meaning from work.

For Hyderabad-based private bank manager S Chandrika Reddy, office work does not give her the degree of satisfaction she seeks. Chandrika has a number-crunching job Monday to Friday. It is all about sitting on a chair and wading through reams of computerised data and making countless calculations.

The job pays for her car and home EMIs, and taken with her husbands salary, enables a comfortable lifestyle, so she is grateful for it. But it can be mind-numbing. So, on weekends, I teach the art of making Nirmal paintings and metal-murals for those with lower-limb disabilities. Here, I am using my hands, literally, not only to indulge my deep love for art but also impart these skills to those who can only use their hands. Many of them are now earning a livelihood out of it. It feels so good, she beams.

(Some names have been changed on request.)