Since Anna and I started living in a village in Kerala, we have realized that it is not easy to find skilled workers such as electricians, plumbers, painters, carpenters, etc.as and when we need them. Most of these people who are trained in these jobs, are employed lucratively in the middle eastern countries or in big firms in the cities and towns. It is not common to find self employed people in villages who can be hired for repairing or mending.
We are waiting for an electrician for two months to fix 15 Amps sockets in our home so that Anna can start using the oven to bake cakes ; a carpenter to reassemble the cupboards we brought from Pondichery and fix some curtain rods; and a painter to paint the house. Having waited, I realised that any further wait is only going to inconvenience us even more.
So we bought an electric drill and fixed the curtain rods ourselves; we painted the kitchen and is now getting a daily wage worker introduced to do the gardening and painting.
It is this that made me think about taking some measures for self sufficiency all of us nee in many skills that we have often delegated to others. As adults we need to view the opportunities to learn new skills and do many practical things with our hands imaginatively as a means for our own personal enlargement and growth.
Life offers us many occasions to become more rounded and proficient. Most of the skills reside within us potentially; it is for us to actualise them by the choices we make. Sometimes we get pushed into new tasks only to discover how fulfilling it is to continue learning and acquire life skills as an ongoing journey to update our capacity. With an access to the internet, which provides us instructions on new skills, we can have a guided tour into learning new skills.
M.C.Mathew (text and photo)
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