Column | Mind thine own business

Why have mega wealthy industrialist fellows hopped aboard the Vande Bharat Youth Blame Express?

Readers, do you ever wonder what you would do if you were to find yourself in the position of one Mr. Moses of Old Testament fame? Not in terms of maritime bifurcation, but in terms of codifying rules that all of humanity must follow?

Do you? If not, you should. It’s very therapeutic.

At least once a week, I find myself coming up with the latest updated versions of my very own Ten Commandments by Sidin Vadukut.

For example: thou shall not wait till thou reaches the front of the queue at the coffee shop before thinking about what coffee thou wishes to consume.

Another example: thou shall not stand outside the cafe and then suddenly ask me for the time because I will check my watch and thereby pour the entire coffee down the front of my long pants. And now I can never go back to the cafe again because they are going to say something like, “Hello Mr. Sidin, another Decaf Pantsaccino for you?”

But one commandment has been on my list since at least 1998: thou shall mind thine own business.

Readers, nowadays you simply cannot open a newspaper, switch on the TV, or surf the Internet without some retired fellow trying to intensely mind your business. And usually these guys have the same script: they harangue youths such as you and I for not working enough, or having work-life balance, or working from home, or eating lunch more than twice a week, or some such nonsense.

At some level, this is not news at all. Inter-generational acrimony has been a part of human existence for millennia. Way back in 700 BCE, back when they had only just started constructing the bullet train from Ahmedabad to Bombay, the ancient Greek poet Hesiod was exasperated by youth. The youths of his day, Hesiod complained, were not as they were in the past. They did not respect elders, and they did not work hard.

Then, just 1,200 years later, one Scottish writer was very, very upset about young people because… they didn’t walk enough and took too many buses. Really. “Many young people were so pampered nowadays that they had forgotten that there was such a thing as walking, and they made automatically for the buses… unless they did something, the future for walking was very poor indeed.”

All this is just shenanigans.

But more recently, there is a new phenomenon that is absolute shenanigans: mega wealthy industrialist fellows have hopped aboard the Vande Bharat Youth Blame Express.

First of all, there is the billionaire who spends at least 35 hours every week reminding young people to work at least 80 hours per week. Okay uncle, then you come to my house and do the laundry, water the plants, and prepare my children for English spelling test on Monday, maths homework on Tuesday, and then you spend the weekend making a plaster-of-Paris model of Van Gogh’s missing ear for Art Appreciation Week.

Then there is LinkedIn, the global headquarters of absolute shenanigans. Once a week or so, I make it a point to check my LinkedIn profile. Just in case somebody is hiring a new CEO with a very particular set of skill requirements: metallurgical engineering, MBA, freelance writing, moderate hygiene, handsome with rugged features.

Unfortunately, I spend all my time reading posts by business magnates complaining about — writer takes a deep breath — youths taking leave, youths asking for salary increments, youths asking for flexible timings, youths rejecting dress code, youths ordering food online, youths writing short emails, youths listening to music in the office, youths getting tired of meetings… In fact, the very existence of youths seems to be driving these fellows to shed tears of disappointment into their caviar smoothies.

They will finally say something like, “Over the last 20 years, I have been lucky to have been on this long and fulfilling journey of discovery and growth, but the state of young people today truly worries me.”

Machaan, please calm down. You worked at Tata Motors for 15 years. As if you are some Marco Polo who went from Venice to Shanghai. Long and fulfilling journey, it seems.

And yet the English language does not have a word to describe these millionaire types who will not shut up about telling other people how to work. Which is why I have the great pleasure to introduce the following word into the lexicon with immediate effect: workaholigarch.

Example sentence: “Doctor, my workaholigarch CEO is joining this Google Meet call, so can you please try and transplant my kidney quietly?”

But what is the point of all this? Have you seen children today? Nobody reads a word.

The writer is head of talent at Clarisights. He lives in London and is currently working on a new novel.

Published - November 28, 2024 01:24 pm IST