(29 Oct. ’06)
The course of my life
hasn’t allowed me to pursue a single career. I can never claim to be an
‘expert’ at anything because I’ve never worked at any single thing for more
than five years at a stretch. However, I’m the only one I know who has worked
in several industries in various capacities. (If there are others like me, do
get in touch, we could start our own group.) In education: as librarian and
teacher. In healthcare: as an administrator. In tourism: as a guest relations
executive in a five star hotel. In the media: as a scorer and puppeteer on
doordarshan, as a freelance writer/editor/columnist. In home-making: as wife and
mother. On stage: as an actor. There have been other episodes of handling
stalls at exhibitions, selling homemade stuff, but those I wouldn’t count as
‘experience’ in my biodata.
Interestingly, each job
threw up unexpected, unofficial perks. No one I know has ever asked about
anything except ‘how much do you get?’ How, one curious acquaintance asked me
could you get perks as a primary school teacher/librarian? Lack of
qualifications makes one innovative. I’d been told to teach music and develop
the love for books in irritating little brats. If other teachers gave homework,
and if parents did projects in history and maths for their beloved offspring,
why shouldn’t they do the same for music, library and p.t. class, I wondered. I
gave them homework in music. Learn from your moms what they learnt in their
childhoods, I ordered. Over the next couple of months, I heard traditional,
folk and modern songs taught by doting parents and transferred to me by very
happy young boys and girls. They got their marks, I my entertainment. No money,
no salary could compensate for the fun. Ditto for the games period. Tell mummy
to teach you her favourite sit-down game. Paradoxically, the mom’s had a great
time with this ‘homework’ and I became a ‘good’ teacher, made friends for life.
As a writer, people
think I make pots of money. Readers who know how much, will give sad smiles at
this. The real benefit of being a writer, the perk, comes from people who want
me to write on so-and-so who’s doing such-and-such thing. In a small place like
Goa, it’s surprising how many people want to anonymously stab someone else
through a keyboard-exponent like me. Write on how x did that deal with y and
reduced his clan to poverty; on which rich lady went back to her doctor
ex-boyfriend (now a middle aged father of three) after her husband’s death….
Great gossip comes for free if your name is seen in print. Total strangers come
and confide things about Big Names. Quite often, these things are true. Someday
I shall develop the discipline to maintain a diary, write a book on these
‘controversial facts’, and get my name on a best-sellers’ list. Someday.
When people know I work
in a hospital, they begin telling me about their aches, pains, coughs, boils,
rashes. Go tell a doctor, I protest, I don’t want to know about pus and phlegm
and gas. It doesn’t deter them, and they give me the gory details anyway. I get
a certain weird respect only because of my proximity to the medical fraternity.
Reflected glory. It comes unasked, I bask in it.
When I worked in a
hotel, the perks came from unexpected sources. The greenery of the garden, the
birds that visited it seasonally, the smell of the churned earth, the pretty
ceramic vases, the celebration of the festivals, the ‘o-I-don’t-want-to-go’
expressions of those checking out, the lifelong friendships thus made….it was
more, much more than the value of the cheque I earned.
The best perk of all is
what I’ve got as home-maker. No salary here, no fixed working hours, no
holidays, no promotions. At the end of almost twenty-nine years, I have no bank
balance, no proof that I’ve done anything at all. Except a sense of security
and belonging. Perks are more valuable than payments.
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