Which city dweller at some point has not dreamed of giving it all up – the hotshot job, the fat salary, the endless circle of senseless days, the difficult spouse – to become a vagabond, a hermit, an adventurer. To be free! And who – come the next morning – has not ceded the idea to the more prosaic reality of home loans, children's schooling, the desire for a plasma TV, another day in the city.
The city, as my economist friend Sauvik Chakraverti likes to point out, exists at the very heart of life. It is the city that offers more division of labour, thereby more markets, thereby more opportunities for you to peddle your talents and all earn all that nice moolah.
Like it or not, the city is the heart of life.
But cities have become unlivable: crowded, dirty, expensive, lacking even basic amenities like electricity and water.
And more and more, people who are not tied to a 9 to 5 job are saying 'hell with it all' and moving out. These are mostly wealthy people who acquire a second home in one of the many villages around Alibag (outside Bombay), have very expensive alternative lifestyles, and manage to straddle the best of both worlds.
Those who don't have pots of money opt for the Simple Life. They grow their own fruits and vegetables, bake their own bread, make their own pickles and jams, and wallow in rural bliss. I don't know anyone who actually lives like this. I'd like to, but it's all too much hard work.
And that's what I've found the Simple Life is all about. It's how simple village people live and clever city types don't.
I've found that trees, amazingly, shed a million leaves, which have to be swept up and burnt or decomposed in some compost pit which you have to build. And fruits have to be protected with netting or plucked before the birds and the beasts get at it. This is much harder than it sounds, believe me. For one, they grow quite out of reach. Having any kind of a garden, in fact, means endless hard work: digging, planting, putting manure, weeding (millions of weeds!). What about the gardener? you ask. What gardener? There is no such thing in a village. Gardeners all live in the city. Domestic help live in the city. The guy who cleans your car lives in the city. Sensible people live in the city!
Perhaps I too should migrate to the city. Living the high life is what I dream of now. A bungalow on Delhi's Amrita Shergill Marg. Some nice village help to do all the chores they would refuse to do in their own village, while madam lounges about in a blue silk kimono. Sounds like bliss: a city idyll.
No comments:
Post a Comment