Thatched House

Morung Express Editorial Dorothy Sayers wrote an article ‘Why Work?’ during World War II. The piece is still relevant for our day and society. It is interesting that such a wonderful piece of writing should be available for about 70 years which could have revolutionized the way we work and yet we continue to have such poor attitude to work. She explained work as ‘a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself…for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing’. The reason we work should not be for the money the work will fetch, but for the sake of the goodness of the work. But the monetary returns of a work is so much ingrained in us that we cannot think in terms of the work being done. The worth of a work is not measured by how much money the person made but how worthy is the thing that is made. When we work on a hobby, we work for the pleasure of it. We don’t count the time and money invested on it because we love the work and has no expectat...

For Monday column in Eastern Mirror ‘If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat’ There are many Naga government employees who draw their salaries month after month, year after year, without doing any work!!! Isn’t there any voice in the conscience, even a tiny whisper, saying, ‘I must do something to earn the salary that I receive each month to support myself and my family’? It is a team-work to work in the government set up and if there is a weak link, the whole department suffers. The office files cannot jump tables and if one staff in the hierarchy does not show up, the files get stuck in his/her table and everything is held up. That is one reason why our office works move too slow. Even if the State releases a sanction for the benefit of a village, if there is one errant employee at the district or block level, that is enough to deprive the village of the benefit. Such instances happen ever so regularly that we have normalized the wrong, and have accepted such things as...