MALADY OF BOREDOM

P. P. SHARMA

“During the week-end I felt so bored, time hung so heavy on my hands, that I felt like committing suicide” bemoaned not a character out of fiction but a typical ‘mod’, hardly yet out of his teens. If we make some allowance for the exaggeration characteristic of youthful utterance in general, we will not be too far amiss in detecting in it a symptom of a malady with which a sizable number of our young are afflicted: the malady of boredom. And yet it is nothing short of a paradox that this malady should claim its victims from among those who should, as a matter of fact, be most resistant to it. Is not youth the springtide of one’s life with its ebullience, exuberant spirits and dizzy raptures? Should not lust for life be at its most virile and zest for living at its knees just then? The prospect of autumnal gloom and pensiveness settling down where one had looked for vernal glory and freshness of a dream is disturbing indeed. The young should, in fact, be too busy-living, snatching for fun and excitement at each passing moment, to have any spare time to feel bored.

This, however, is easier said than done, I would readily grant this. But to say that this is an impracticable piece of perfectionist advice, or to dismiss it as a pious platitude is not right. It does of course take some effort to ward off boredom but it is nothing unachievable, to be sure. The very consciousness that boredom should be prevented from spreading its tentacle and enmeshing us is the first significant step in the right direction.

The notion that to feel bored is a sign of culture on the part of an individual has somehow insinuated itself into the minds of some of us and has acquired a kind of snob value. By complaining that he was bored in the company of so and so one is possibly trying to give an oblique hint that he is of a superior taste, higher calibre or finer timber. For reasons not hard to guess, this is never stated overtly, though. Now, it may or may not be so. If in a seminar on hydraulics, I am reduced to the pathetic condition of throwing my jaws apart in frequent yawns, I can’t lay the fault at the door of the specialists.

If, however, for the sake of argument, it is assumed that my boredom is due to the banal level of discussion, it may be fairly retorted that “small talk” too has its place in our human scheme of things. It is priggish to be for ever striking a pose in order to appear sophisticated, urbane and academic. We all know that by nodding occasionally Homer loses nothing of his stature, nor does Socrates, while relentlessly pursuing his logic, by unbending. One misses a great deal by staying tense and tant all the time. There is an infinite variety of human comedy unfolding itself before us even in what looks like prosaic and humdrum company. Viewed in a spirit of humanity and tolerance, it will afford us plenty of mirth and amusement. Who could have imagined an ill-assorted, chance-gathered motley crowd of pilgrims anything but dull and monotonous, if not chilling and forbidding? But Chaucer found in it a perennial source of good humour and delight. Similarly, the French essayist Montaigne never thought it wise to keep his glance averted from the follies and foibles of mankind. Since he was never disdainful or supercilious, he garnered a rich store from a loving observation of them.

If, therefore, you happen to be travelling in a second class railway compartment (and that will depend on the locomen not striking and your being able to somehow squeeze in), you can – and hopefully you will – find in the incessant flow of twaddle something to keep you amused gratis. And what is more, you don’t have to do a thing about it; neither to lift your little finger nor, for that matter, raise your small voice. Just relax and listen, or preferably, eavesdrop by feigning indifference. Merely by remaining a spectator you will enjoy yourself better than, to use Francis Bacon’s word, the gamester; I can vouch for this. Precariously perched at the edge of the all-too-cramped berth you cannot deny yourself a chuckle or two on savouring some specimens of mother-wit in the cacophony of the simple and the homespun. Where the eyes are a glitter and the spine is fingling with strange sensations, boredom dare not descend.

What place is apparently more conducive to weariness of spirit and vexation than goal. Yet, Oscar Wilde found it most congenial to his creativity. The artist in him found its peace and solitude a haven for his trouble-tossed spirit, its lack of human company a balm for his lacerated sensibility. Rescuing as it did Nehru from his inevitable involvement in the nation’s affairs, the loneliness of prison gave him his all-too-rare and precious spells of contemplation and discovery. Nobody who had any substance in him ever died of ennui in the sunless caverns of a dungeon. Outside jail also, there are bound to be, at one time or other, hours of utter and unrelieved solitariness. How is one to survive them and not succumb to boredom? Well, to put it at its simplest, by rubbing one thought against another. A man with a cultivated mind need never fear boredom, for he carries within him a whole world vibrant with vitality. He has only to ransack his riches. Ruskin tells us how he would keep his spirits from drooping by reminding himself that “Apricot” was derived from the same root as “precocious” because the apricot matured early. There are so many intangibles that will arise like a bulwark against boredom. At a pinch, all’s grist that comes to the mind’s mill, even controversies long since silenced.

Since this inner culture is not available to everybody to draw upon, nature has provided its own anodyne against boredom. To realize this, one has only to take a look at the tremendous drama that is being enacted right before him under the blue sky and above the green earth. One can be thrilled by and respond to everyday sights and sounds without getting into the transcendental mood of the Vedic Sage or the mystic trance of a Wordsworth just by purging his senses of the film of familiarity. If that is done, then the dismal round of dreary existence will, no doubt, be illuminated by a thousand phenomena and scenes which, although they seldom press themselves obtrusively on us, encompass us all the time: a peculiar slant in light, a configuration of clouds, a movement in water, a drift in the breeze, a splash of colour on the horizon. Each moment being unique, how can one afford to turn an imperceptive eye or an impervious ear to what it brings? One might as well be touched by Gorgon if one cannot shake off one’s apathy and indifference.

Aldous Huxley hoped to hold boredom at bay on a desert island with the help of a couple of books. Robert Southey’s counsel comes direct to our business and bosom: even the greatest of authors will unfailingly turn up at our bidding at the most unearthly hour to cheer us and comfort us. Book-reading is not to be equated with an idle pastime like playing cards, nor with a visit to a cinema house. “We go to the movies”, laments a character of Tennessee Williams, “instead of moving”. Only that recreation is most worthwhile which answers to a hidden longing in us to live a richer, fuller life, may be, vicariously through imagination.

Hobbies too are a great help in fighting boredom and overcoming tedium. Particularly when old age comes on a man, then he must have something to fall back upon to save his last few years from frustrating emptiness and to keep himself obliviously occupied. But they should be cultivated well in time before the feeling of being at a loose end sets in.

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