When Fear Becomes A Luxury

 

It is another chaotic morning as I prepare the breakfast for the day.

I need to grind some tomatoes in the mixer. I drop the roughly chopped tomatoes into the jar, affix the same on the mixer and press the switch. I jolt at the zing of electric current.

I observe the switch closely and see a crack on the same.

I remind myself to call the electrician, but not before I get zinged yet again. For, I had to use the mixer again and it totally slipped my mind to use something wooden to press the switch.

At noon, the electrician comes. I show him the offending switch. He calmly takes out a screwdriver and runs it all over the switch. Not only does he do that, he also does the same process with the adjacent switch on the board.

“Hmmm,” He says. “This needs to be changed.” I cringe as he runs the screwdriver over the switch yet again. He, on the other hand, stays his calm stoical self with no expression of having had an electric shock.

I wonder how many years it took for him to not to get scared before testing any wire/switch, to not to hesitate before touching anything with the screwdriver, to not to feel a sense of dread when he gets a call saying that some switch or some wire is giving shocks.

I wonder whether he had dreamt of this future when he was a kid. Whether he imagined that one day he would be doing a dangerous job.

Fear becomes a luxury sometimes.

Hyderabad is seeing a retail boom. Everywhere you go, you can see towering skyscrapers being constructed. I was once stuck in a traffic jam. Sitting inside an auto, I saw some workers at a construction site, high up at around the tenth floor or so, sitting on make-shift planks, holding onto one side of a bamboo literally for their lives and with the other, painting the wall of a building.

I couldn’t help wondering whether any of them might have had (or still have) the fear of heights. Did it ever made them hesitate to take up such jobs? How many years did it take for them to conquer their fear of heights? How many times did they hesitate before climbing up, until it no longer started mattering? Did it ever stop mattering? Did they conquer their fears, or embrace the same? Did any of them imagine this as their future?

Fear becomes a luxury when it comes to survival.

What motivates these people to undertake such dangerous jobs on a daily basis? Survival? But isn’t it a danger to their survival, this job that they are doing? I will never be able to arrive at a conclusion about this.

All I know is that, compared to zillions of people worldwide who live on the edge of danger every single day of their lives, many of us lead pampered existences and still find reasons to crib and complain.

When we realize that to be scared is also a luxury for many, probably we will be humbled, and will be able to perceive the world around us with gratitude and humility. While we cannot do anything for the people doing dangerous jobs, we can include them in our prayers, beseeching the Universe to keep them safe, and in a fairer lifetime, give them the luxury to be scared, to hesitate and hopefully to refrain from doing anything dangerous.