The daily grind
January 04, 2010
If it’s a struggle for me then what must it be like for all the rest? There is a roof over my head, food in the larder and a warm bed to sleep in. I lack little. That which I do not have I either don’t need or don’t desire — but if I did then I would in likelihood be able to have whatever it was that I needed or desired. Yet life, the daily round of earning a living, of pasting together the patchwork of necessities that takes me from dawn to dusk, is a grind. An interesting word, ‘grind.’ It speaks of wheat and life and health and food on the one hand; but of the reduction of something larger to something smaller on the other. It is that ‘smaller’ that preoccupies me. The grinding down of the constituent parts to something infinitely less than they were — to a reduction of the sum of their parts.
These words were originally written by candlelight. By means of a light source as old as man’s manipulation of fire. The candle is one of the most basic forms of artificial illumination that we have; a wick of braided fibres surrounded by tallow or wax. An ancient light that burns in millions of households today, in 2010, while later inventions — like the light bulb — are merely decorative, and dark.
The light has gone from my home. Rather not gone but it is instead a fitful and intemperate visitor. Capricious. In the last week, the power has been absent for up to 16 hours in any day and you never know when it is coming or going because there is no announcement by any medium as to its presence or absence. I struggle to get my computer to sing its little start-up song to me because there is no blood in its veins. But wait, help is at hand. Over the weekend, a transfusion has been arranged. Blood will flow into the electrical box of tricks down by my right foot courtesy a fresh battery for the UPS and a brand new generator purchased at an expense I can only just afford because the power is never on long enough to recharge the battery that runs the UPS. A circular problem soluble only by the application of money.
This is our life today, a hand-to-mouth existence. A grind that for me is easier for having the money to make it so but for millions here in the Land of the Pure there is not that luxury. They cannot phone a friend as I did, seething with exasperation, and say to him: “Any chance of getting me a generator by Saturday?’ They may have the phone but not the money. There will be light in my house by the time these words are read on Monday morning. There probably will not be in the houses of the people who come in daily to make my life even easier, the domestic staff for whom my simple house is a wonderland of gadgetry and luxuries they can look at but never own. They often stay far past their duty time, sitting with little to do but watch the endless soap operas on the television. I asked them once why they stayed. They told me because my house is warm, it has light and food and their houses have little or none of any of those things. So I never shoo them out and I like to think that a little of my own relative wealth is trickling down to them. And as for the daily grind…well we’re all in it together, aren’t we? Chin up!
The writer is a British social worker settled in Pakistan. Email:manticore73@gmail.com
These words were originally written by candlelight. By means of a light source as old as man’s manipulation of fire. The candle is one of the most basic forms of artificial illumination that we have; a wick of braided fibres surrounded by tallow or wax. An ancient light that burns in millions of households today, in 2010, while later inventions — like the light bulb — are merely decorative, and dark.
The light has gone from my home. Rather not gone but it is instead a fitful and intemperate visitor. Capricious. In the last week, the power has been absent for up to 16 hours in any day and you never know when it is coming or going because there is no announcement by any medium as to its presence or absence. I struggle to get my computer to sing its little start-up song to me because there is no blood in its veins. But wait, help is at hand. Over the weekend, a transfusion has been arranged. Blood will flow into the electrical box of tricks down by my right foot courtesy a fresh battery for the UPS and a brand new generator purchased at an expense I can only just afford because the power is never on long enough to recharge the battery that runs the UPS. A circular problem soluble only by the application of money.
This is our life today, a hand-to-mouth existence. A grind that for me is easier for having the money to make it so but for millions here in the Land of the Pure there is not that luxury. They cannot phone a friend as I did, seething with exasperation, and say to him: “Any chance of getting me a generator by Saturday?’ They may have the phone but not the money. There will be light in my house by the time these words are read on Monday morning. There probably will not be in the houses of the people who come in daily to make my life even easier, the domestic staff for whom my simple house is a wonderland of gadgetry and luxuries they can look at but never own. They often stay far past their duty time, sitting with little to do but watch the endless soap operas on the television. I asked them once why they stayed. They told me because my house is warm, it has light and food and their houses have little or none of any of those things. So I never shoo them out and I like to think that a little of my own relative wealth is trickling down to them. And as for the daily grind…well we’re all in it together, aren’t we? Chin up!
The writer is a British social worker settled in Pakistan. Email:manticore73@gmail.com
