But that image of the writer hunched over his typing contraption for hours on end might be passé. The authors who once prided themselves on their ability to write for long stretches of time, their bum gummed to their seat, as advised in Creative Writing 101, now face an existential crisis. Emerging research shows that sitting for long periods is potentially deadly. Apparently, sitting for 11 or more hours per day increases risk of death by 40 percent, regardless of your other activities. In other words, even if you are a seasoned marathoner like Haruki Murakami, running for an hour at the start of the day does not compensate for chilling it on your ass for the rest of it.
This is why the 'treadmill desks' are all the rage in the US. Most employees at Google, Facebook and Twitter now work standing up. At US $2,000 a pop, these desks don't come cheap. But seriously, if I made that kind of money these stupid stand-up clowns would be the last thing on my mind.
Not that I could find one around here. But even if someone were to gift it to me, I wouldn't know what to do with it. Much less walk while I write (yes, it's possible), I have found I cannot even think clearly standing up.
There are enough writers who have lived long and productive lives even while they sat through most of it (Tolstoy, Marquez, Munro, the last of whom, at 83, is still going strong). Surely, as often happens with these scientific digs, there is a hitch somewhere and before long they will discover that sitting is as safe as smoking crack.
But that is cold comfort to us hypochondriacs. For all I know, while I am writing this reclined in my high-backed chair, I might be inviting a heart attack, my BP steadily notching up, my tetchy triglycerides reaching for the moons. Startled with the realization, I want to stand up, stroll around. But if I do that every minute, as I feel like, I won't be able to write anything. And so I sit and moan and grumble as I scratch this increasingly irksome itch to write something once a while for you lazy bums (you are sitting as you read this, aren't you?).
These days I make it a point to stand more (and more often) even if it does not go down well with all audiences. In the adult-learning program I am enrolled in, my colleagues keep asking me to sit down during tea break, rather than always hovering above them like a half-drunk zombie from the CA road-show.
No one understands it better than our lawmakers that modern chairs are designed to make you as comfortable as possible. Only now we know such comfort is illusive. Just like cigarette packets, these plush chairs should come in plastic wraps that show people in throes of full-flown cardiac arrest, or bent senseless from a You Tube-induced stroke.
Sitting continuously for an hour might, they now say, be as dangerous as a stick of Marlboro. This makes perfect evolutionary sense. One survey found that an average American spent eight hours sitting every day. No such luxury for our ancestors who had to walk long stretches to hunt down their lunch. But even if they were sitting a lot, they wouldn't know it was harmful. When it comes to sitting, knowledge, as Shakespeare says, has truly become the wing with which to fly to heaven.
He should know. When Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, at the tender age of 52, he was believed to be in "perfect health" in his own words. The real cause of his death remains a mystery to this day. But surely it was all those useless plays he wrote perched on his derriere by the Avon. Now here is my dilemma: I cannot write standing up; I cannot sit down without my heart going kaput; and not writing is simply not an option.
Now, my cushion-happy readers, what would you have done?
biswas.baral@gmail.com
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