The Philosophy of Laziness

 

Still in Class Nine at Khaling, our hero had somehow topped the class.

This created a dangerous misunderstanding in his own head.

He began to believe there was nothing much left to study.

So while serious students opened books, sharpened pencils and prepared for the next academic battle, our hero wandered around with his friends as if Khaling had appointed him minister of useless activities.

Some days, they walked down to nearby villages with no real purpose except to escape the school compound and return before someone important noticed their absence.

Other days, they went to watch movies.

But watching movies in those days was not as simple as pressing a button and lying uselessly on a bed. One had to hire a room with a television, rent a VHS cassette from a shop, carry it like national treasure, and gather around the screen as if cinema itself had descended upon Khaling.

It was during these VHS missions that our hero noticed something educational, though not exactly from the school syllabus.

Whenever the boys went to rent a cassette, a few of them would crowd around the shopkeeper, asking unnecessary questions and blocking his view with great professional seriousness. Meanwhile, the boys at the back conducted a silent inventory reduction exercise. Extra VHS tapes disappeared. Biscuits disappeared. Sweets disappeared. Even cookies — pronounced with full confidence as cokies — disappeared if they came too close to the wrong hand. It was teamwork, technically.

Just not the kind teachers wrote about in moral science.

During weekends, if he was not wandering to villages or observing these illegal cinema procurement operations, he went for long walks along the highway towards Kanglung.

He would walk and walk until Khaling became smaller behind him. When tired, he would lie down by the roadside like a retired soldier of boredom, stare at the sky for a while, then get up and walk back to school.

On other days, he went down to Jiri Chhu to wash his clothes.

That was life in Khaling.

Walk to nowhere.
Wash clothes.
Watch movies.
Return hungry.
Repeat.

Life was so uneventful that even mischief had to be manufactured with effort.

Meanwhile, his academic competitor was living a completely different life.

That boy studied during games period.
Studied during weekends.
Studied during holidays.

He probably studied even while blinking.

Our hero saw all this and felt no great alarm. The syllabus, unfortunately, had not yet found a way to properly threaten him. He had topped the class once and, in his generous foolishness, began to suspect that school had already revealed all its weapons.

He had no intention of competing with anyone.

Not because he was humble.

But because boredom and laziness, once they settle properly inside a boy, begin to look very much like philosophy.