In late 2023, NR Narayana Murthy, founder of the multinational technology giant Infosys, sparked a global debate when he claimed that young people should work 70 hours a week. While the jury is still out on whether this was the let-them-eat-cake moment of the Indian corporate sector, several critics of Narayana Murthy, father-in-law of former British prime minister Rishi Sunak, described his suggestion to be symptomatic of the toxic work culture that is often promoted as industriousness. In his recent In Praise of Laziness and Other Essays, author Indrajit Hazra rails and rants and argues and cajoles against any such misplaced notion of productivity.
“Both you and I have no expectations, barring one: pleasure,” he writes in the introductory essay. He sets a clear distinction between his collection of essays — “relooking at some overlooked, some over-cooked subjects in a ‘carefully careless way’” — and books that claim to provide useful information, such as volumes of non-fiction or best-selling self-help guides. As a senior journalist, Hazra knows the trouble with those who make “information the end-all and be-all of all experience”, especially in our post-truth world, where well-constructed disinformation can mislead the best of us. So, instead, Hazra takes his readers on a non-utilitarian merry ride through a mindboggling series of subjects that do not follow any scientific methodology, but do betray his erudition.
In the titular essay, he chooses Kumbhakarna as his hero of laziness. “In essence, Kumbhakarna is what the philosophers and other lifestyle commentators would describe as an Epicurean, a pleasure-seeker, a sensualist,” he writes. The brother of Ravana in the Ramayana is, for Hazra, “the most famous brand ambassador of sleep… laziness made flesh.” The author draws upon a wide variety of sources, such as AK Ramanujan’s famous essay on the many versions of the Sanskrit epic, the Bengali prose translation of the poem by a team helmed by Jyotibhushan Chaki, Arshia Sattar’s abridged English version of the Valmiki text, as well as a 17th century Rajput painting to imagine this epic character. He also combs through history, literature, philosophy, and popular culture to find other champions of laziness. This is not a task for the fainthearted. As Hazra knows, “Greatness becomes enjoined with action. At best, pusillanimity has been seen as inaction’s muse.” But he does a great job of lining up the witnesses to make his case — Czech novelist Milan Kundera, Bengali writer Shibram Chakraborty, British philosopher Bertrand Russell, and some academic papers and religious evangelists.
{{/usCountry}}In the titular essay, he chooses Kumbhakarna as his hero of laziness. “In essence, Kumbhakarna is what the philosophers and other lifestyle commentators would describe as an Epicurean, a pleasure-seeker, a sensualist,” he writes. The brother of Ravana in the Ramayana is, for Hazra, “the most famous brand ambassador of sleep… laziness made flesh.” The author draws upon a wide variety of sources, such as AK Ramanujan’s famous essay on the many versions of the Sanskrit epic, the Bengali prose translation of the poem by a team helmed by Jyotibhushan Chaki, Arshia Sattar’s abridged English version of the Valmiki text, as well as a 17th century Rajput painting to imagine this epic character. He also combs through history, literature, philosophy, and popular culture to find other champions of laziness. This is not a task for the fainthearted. As Hazra knows, “Greatness becomes enjoined with action. At best, pusillanimity has been seen as inaction’s muse.” But he does a great job of lining up the witnesses to make his case — Czech novelist Milan Kundera, Bengali writer Shibram Chakraborty, British philosopher Bertrand Russell, and some academic papers and religious evangelists.
{{/usCountry}}At one point, he even embarks on an investigation into the etymology of the Bengali word “lyadh”. Anyone who has spent time in the verdant campus of Jadavpur University in south Kolkata, like Hazra has done, knows that there are few activities in the world that afford as much pleasure as lyadh khawa — consuming laziness. Or, being “consumed by it”. I suspect that the etymological digression is another example of the author’s narrative playfulness — as opposed to a serious academic exercise — that makes reading this book a pleasurable experience. Frankly, if you are enjoying a bout of lyadh it is unlikely you will spend any energy on its gnarled origins.
Hazra’s linguistic style is a combination of verbal callisthenics and a conversational tone. In the essay titled What Do You Know of My Football?, he describes his irrational love for three football teams — Mohun Bagan, Arsenal and Argentina. “My support to Argentina is like supporting the Kauravas. No matter the final scoreline after each Kurukshetra,” he writes. Endless bits of interesting trivia and theorising delivered in such language can be a delight to read.
However, the linguistic performance can, at times, prove to be Hazra’s Achilles’ heel. For instance, in the essay, A Man of the Great Indoor, while writing about how the natural world is imagined, and comparing it to Benedict Anderson’s popular idea of nation-states as imagined communities, Hazra comes up with this sentence: “(T)he spit and duct-taped entity is protected by sheer Schopenhauerian representative willy-nilly, while outliers and anomalies are made to bear the brunt of being a spanner in the works of a gigantic socialistic garden project that everyone wants to tend to.” There can be too much of a good thing.
At its best, Hazra’s writing can be full of pathos. This quality is best demonstrated in Becoming Adult, where he compares Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn to Pagla Dashu, a comic but rebellious schoolboy created by Bengali writer Sukumar Ray. “All old people have been young,” writes Hazra. “But not all young people have been old.” The essay’s literary criticism might not find too many takers, but its meditations on boyhood — its hopes, promises, and disappointments — are likely to move any adult reader. At a time when global conflict has made the violent death of children a common affair, this essay — like several others in the book — makes one pause and consider subjects that might not be utilitarian at all.
Uttaran Das Gupta is a New Delhi-based writer and journalist