Do-It-Yourself

We have a small garden on our terrace and the idea of having the Sunday morning breakfast amidst the flowering pots was a sunny idea. Chinmay came up with this idea that he would like to make the breakfast table himself. The idea was exciting, but I was apprehensive we may end up buying other things other than the table like the tools. But still the idea held good.

I made lots of attempts to find a “Do-It-Yourself” kit for breakfast tables. I surfed the net for help, contacts…I could only find hits with names in the US. I scanned the Yellow Pages for suppliers of Garden Tools and Furniture.

A couple of them just didn’t understand what I wanted. They were like – why-should-you-want-to-do-it-yourself—what-am-I-here-for?

Another supplier of garden furniture said, “We can make the ‘do-it-yourself’ kit for you.. you tell the design you want, we will do it”. I said, “That means you would have done everything yourself”. “You can take it home and assemble yourself madam”, he replied.

Another person said, “Ah.. that is American style madam… only there you would want to do it yourself”.

I haven’t yet been successful in finding what we want. But the whole search got me thinking that why the Do-It-Yourself thing is an “American” style. Why is it that we always want to get things done? In fact, I have seen that we even take pride when we show around the house saying, “We got it done ourselves”.

In the movie Swades, Shahrukh Khan returns from the US and buys and installs the turbine, pipes, motors, everything to generate electricity.. basically does-it-himself (of course with the others’ help). If necessity is the mother of invention, why didn’t we do-it-ourselves?

Seems strange.. but something to ponder over the weekend.