Learning to Do It Yourself

Photo by Alexandru-Bogdan Ghita on Unsplash

The first time I learned how to make my own breakfast was just over a year ago, when the pandemic first slammed into us and survival became our new way of life.

If your first thought to this statement was, “Typical privileged middle UC boy, can’t even make eggs,” you’d be very valid in your judgement.

After all, how hard is it to make eggs in the morning?

And yet, I only learned during the first week of no longer having domestic help coming over, that it really isn’t that hard to make eggs.

The more I did it, the better my eggs tasted. I even got quicker at making them and reduced the mess I made afterwards to clean up. Infact, pretty soon, I was making the best eggs I’ve ever had and I progressively moved on to making the best eggs my family ever had.

From then on, I started making dinner and then lunch and finally, within the first year of the pandemic, I had attained the basic ability to feed myself and a family of four.

It genuinely surprises me that I spent so much of my life never bothering to learn something so simple and easy. It makes me wonder how many others have similar stories to share – how many people of us are finally mastering day-to-day chores, that we would otherwise relegate to domestic help? How many people out there learned simple life skills after mechanics, plumbers, electricians, and the likes, were no longer available?

Even my parents spent their whole lives never having jumped a car by themselves until I showed them how to. It puzzled me that anyone would ever need to call a mechanic for a dead battery, yet my own parents have been doing it forever–that says so much about our culture of over consuming cheap labour.

You won’t see these sorts of habits as often in countries like America and the UK, where these basic services are pretty expensive and people grow up learning how to do a lot of these things on their own. If we valued and respected this sort of work to the same degree as we respect any other sort of work done in India, we’d pay better for it, we’d do more of it on our own, we’d treat it with more respect. We’d exist in a society that was more appreciative of the estimated 4 million workforce that does domestic work in our country.

Ask yourselves…

Can I replace a lightbulb?

Can I fix my laptop?

Can I fix my wobbly table?

Can I work a hammer?

Can I use a screwdriver?

What do I do if the toilet is choked? What do I do if the sink backs up? Could I paint my own walls? How do I clean this house on my lonesome?

I can imagine some of you reading these questions and thinking, “Pfft, you’re saying there are people who can’t do this?” To those people, I’d like to say, “Can you please show me how?”

Because why not? Learning skills like this is invaluable and it follows you anywhere you go in the world. You could plant your roots comfortably, at a place of your choosing. Plus, we also have YouTube tutorials for everything now, it’s easy to learn, easy to implement, and the benefits are exponential.

Personally, I’m glad that I finally learned so many essential life skills that I otherwise never would have bothered to learn before the lockdown. It makes me feel more confident, more empowered and more independent– those are generally great feelings to have especially in these trying times we’re living through.

So DIY a little more, I highly recommend it!