Leisure as time for intellectual renewal

My advice to newly recruited civil service officers has always been that, in addition to their profession, they must cultivate a hobby or sport.

- Pavan K Varma

Without these assets, people become unidimensional, gripped only by ambition, careerism and envy. The overworked professional, the harried bureaucrat, the corporate leader obsessed with the balance sheet, the politician perpetually campaigning —all are under the delusion that exhaustion equals efficiency.

In our age of relentless acceleration — where inboxes overflow, meetings multiply, and the tyranny of the urgent trumps the importance of the essential — the idea of leisure has been tragically misunderstood. Leisure, the ancients believed, was not idleness; it was an investment in the mind and the spirit. The Greek scholé, from which the word school is derived, meant precisely that — restful reflection, the cultivation of an inner life. Those who say that there is no time for such indulgences are lying. If you love something, you will always find time for it.

Samudra Gupta (335-375 CE), who created an empire stretching across India, was both a conqueror and a musician. Raja Bhoja (1010-1055 CE), the great Malwa ruler, wrote 84 books on subjects ranging from lexicography to poetics. Mughal emperor Akbar’s hobby was painting. Alas, Indian political leaders today revel in the fact that they do nothing but work 24/7, take no holidays, and have no other interests.