Professional Hazards… Part 1

Professional Hazards…

It was around 8.30 PM when I was driving through the security gate of our office.
As always, my eager eyes searched for that enthusiastic guard, whose perennial reserve of a ‘warm smile’ is so pervading and refreshing. He waived out and I applied the brakes

“Don’t your legs pain… I have seen you standing here always …” suddenly I asked. He replied with a smile “It used to pain Sir, no more – legs have got used to it now”. “But… may be in the long run it may result in back ache” I said. “Yeah… possible”. “But it is my duty, I have to stand here” he replied.

I suddenly realized a painful truth and told him “You get back-pain for standing all day … We get back-pain for sitting all day …”

I moved. My Mind haggled with that thought! Professional hazard!! Strange, every profession/work gives rise to professional hazard!

Normally, in our profession, since physical movements are very limited, body cholesterol starts showing its impact very fast. Our waist lines expand faster, flabs show up leading to a heart attack! Weakening of eye sight, lowering of immunity, hair loss, acidity etc are the “undivided family of professional hazards”! In short, life span turns shorter! We age fast!

I was pondering over our work culture. We spend more than 12 hours a day in office and around 4 hours in thinking about office! The other activities occupy the balance time. Except for some exceptional moments, many of us never share moments of joy/sorrow with our family or friends. We never have time for chat, drama, dance, music…

One CA friend had circulated following lines in an e Group:

Are you-
Emotionally Numb?
Romantically Starved?
Creatively Challenged?
Artistically Void?
Socially Outcast?
Congratulations, You are a CA*!!

*Replace CA with the name of your profession. It may perfectly suit you.

While on talk, for asserting the view if one says “I can write it on a stamp paper” he must be a legal/finance professional! If one says “I can carve it on metal/stones” he must be an engineer / sculptor / civil contractor. If one says “I can burn it on a CD” he must be an IT guy! So on and so forth…Always in the back of our mind, our profession keeps working. This is the reason.

Some mails are on circulation for quite sometime now on, “What if you were married a CA/CS/Lawyer/ Software engineer?” The narrative was beautifully meaningful, of course, with some satire. But then, we are just that! So devoid of all emotions, passions and the zest for life.


So, professional hazards are not just limited to physical health only… it is also a peril to our social life.

If you have observed carefully, I have used ‘/’ many times in this article…. Unavoidable impact of being a CS and a lawyer! For picking up this “evidence” also, again a ‘lawyer’s intelligensia’ might have worked!

If we agree that these are “hazards”, then we cannot simply let them slip by us. We need to treat ourselves before these physical and psychological damages gorge our lives. Are you with me?!

Published in the eNewsletter of ICSI Mysore Chapter in its February 2009 ಎಡಿಶನ್.