Malinda Words: The virtues of unemployability

Sometimes people ask me what I do. And when such questions are asked, I say, with pride and a wide grin, ‘I am an unemployed graduate.’ I add, ‘for the eighth time.’

It is not true though. I am unemployed only in terms of what employment is usually taken to mean: a steady job with a regular income. Sometimes I do say, ‘I am unemployed and perhaps unemployable.’ I am never sure if that should be said with pride or shame. Probably pride.

‘But you write.’

Yes, I do. Freelance. Journalists know what this means in terms of ‘steadiness’ and ‘regularity’ as per the above definition. I will not elaborate except to refer to an article I wrote twelve years ago. It was published in the Daily News of the first ‘The Morning Inspection’ series which ran from September 2009 to October 2011.

The title was, ‘On the “free” and “lance” of freelance.’ I remember wishing that I had called it ‘On being lanced by the free.’ I referred, in that essay, to an admonishment from my younger daughter, then just eight years old. She had figured it all out.

‘You don’t need a lot of time for your work; you need time for other people’s work,’ she said, and elaborated, ‘I have heard you speaking on the phone. You are always telling people “hari, hari, machang, karala dennam (ok, ok, I’ll do it)”.’

I've described my 'work' at times as being akin to that of a cobbler. I don't go around knocking on doors asking if there are shoes to be repaired. I sit under a tree and if someone comes to me, wanting a shoe to be mended, I do it.

And so, there’s my work. There’s ‘other people’s work.’ And there’s a lot of time outside of work. Those are the unemployed hours, the pluses of unemployability, if you will. One might say that’s making a virtue out of inevitability, but no, these are happy hours, really, which I once described in a poem titled ‘The virtues of unemployment.’

Like an ethereal scavenger sweeping
over the litter that collects in tiny piles
on the architecture of the political
those made-up faces and faces that are beyond repair;
I see the epic narratives missed by literatures
in a scar, in the plain tea quick-fix
the marshmallows and poisons
the varnishing that makes palatable
ineffective and yet bitter medicines
prescribed by these quack doctored times;
I stand at a window without a frame
by a petti kade too humble for name
but which is sentinel to monotony unnoticed
same faces at the same time
same voices asking for the same things
same greetings, same smiles and same conversations
layered over the unspeakable
in the courtesies that say nothing
but are warm nevertheless and true as well
kohomada? vahiy da? Ennam....
'We are one,' I tell myself
'We are solitary people,' I also add,
take a breath and think of you.
Life is good.

I was not writing a daily column, i.e. from Monday through Saturday, at the time I wrote this. So, I can’t even say that I just kept eyes and ears open for ‘material.’ That’s simply because there’s so much around that one doesn’t really have to look. The delightful thing about it is that the obvious depravations are more than adequately compensated for by freedom from the tyranny of clocks and work-briefs.

I’ve realised that time passes slowly. I’ve also realised then when liberated in this manner, things move slowly too. Put another way, there’s ample time to stop, say hello and chit-chat about everything or nothing with people known, familiar or absolutely unknown. All it takes is for the eye to meet an eye. People smile. All it takes is a chance comment or question to which you don’t have to react but will not be faulted for doing so.

And then, there are times when there’s not much said or indeed nothing is said. There’s still so much that happens. You can pick and choose where to rest your gaze. You can choose to dream and daydream.

You can worry too because underemployment, which is what freelance journalism is, sends expendable income racing to zero. There’s a trick that cures this malady too: simply separate things into that which one has some control over and that which is beyond control. The latter is a universe, the former a few grains of sand. Retire the latter and that’s how one manufactures expendable time. It’s value that is not tangible, value that does not make for exchange. Value that is invisible and therefore assumed to be non-existent and deserving of sympathy. Or disgust.

But we know, us freelancers do. We know how to make do. And we know that those who lance us for this ‘freedom’ don’t know that we know all about the abuse of 'free' and the poisons in which the tip of the 'lance' has been dipped.

What do I do, do you really want to know? Nothing machang, and don’t you wish you could say that too?

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 257th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

03 November 2023

The virtues of unemployability

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