Pic Courtesy: Respected Cartoonist Late Mario de Miranda's treasure trove
The word 'vacation' brings back a bevy of fond memories. And for somebody like me who's lived all her life abroad, those two months of careless abandon is something the entire family looked forward to for 10 months...10 months of slogging and 10 months of living a life that had every day as a photocopy of the previous one. Life gets so boringly predictable when you're living abroad...esp., here in the Middle East.
Okay I don't want to deviate much from the topic.
In essence, what IS a vacation? In the truest sense of the word, a vacation means <<a period of suspension of work, study, or other activity, usually used for rest, recreation, or travel; recess or holiday>> (thanks for that www.dictionary.com) In other words, it's everything that an Indian vacation is not! No, I'm not joking. Read on to know why...
Typically, a vacation is a time when people leave behind all their work and go someplace where all they want to do is just relax and practically do nothing stressful...they have enough stress at work/home anyway. Popular destinations are the Maldives or Thailand or Switzerland. Guess it's obvious why they are called Summer/Winter 'Get-Away's... :) You're actually supposed to 'get away' from some routine. Duh!
But for Indians, it's almost never like that. Planning for vacations happen in full swing several months before (there are people who book tickets for their next year's trip almost immediately after they get back after their vacation!) and no stone is left unturned. All that is fine. Everybody does it. Who doesn't,eh? I haven't gotten to the main part. The glitch lies in the destinantion....which is (more usually than not) almost always.... INDIA.
I have heard from ever since I can remember that one lifetime is not enough to finish seeing all of India. Fine. I'm okay with that fact. So there are other countries that can be covered in a week or two,no? Why INDIA every single time??? Grr!
Question parents' motives on heading homeward every single year and the answer one gets is invariably the same everytime...'we have loved ones back home who are waiting to see us'! Or some other reason that has this basic reason beneath it. Okay, so we're going home not to relax but to 'see loved ones'. Cool!
Gifts and trinkets are bought by the dozen for hard-to-please relatives and extended family (they never think anything is too much,though!). Even if we kids 'forget' to take any school books, parents dutifully pack all books into mammoth suitcases. And then off we go!
Getting back to where we started from...the definition of vacation. Let's analyse that sweet and simple little definition a bit in the Indian context,shall we?
Suspension of Work
This never happens. Working individuals almost always carry a portable office with them on every trip. They have access to their official emails which they feel is their duty to respond to eventhough they know that they're entitled to and supposed to be chilling their butts away at the far end of nowhere. They also have to attend those official calls even if they have to pay a fortune for roaming charges. Blame it on the working culture that runs in our blood. We're just programmed to feel guilty if we're not sincere towards our jobs...even if they're making you work like a dog and paying you peanuts! Duh!
Suspension of study
Schools also remembered to add to the misery. Our classes started in April and we were given summer holidays during July-August. Which meant after two full months of educational drilling. And teachers found the easiest way out to complete their portions on time by loading our poor backs with what they called 'Holiday-Homework'! I'm sure all NRI kids will be able to relate to that. Cousins back home never understood why we carried our books and did extensive assignments during the time when we're supposed to be enjoying ourselves. Ah! Misery!
Suspension of other activity
What other activity? If you're talking of extra curricular activities, then there are plenty of so-called 'Summer camps' for NRI kids for a quick 2-month crash run-through in dance or music or even academic tuition! o_O So...'suspension of other activity' also does not happen!
Rest
Rest is again something we get very little of. We're getting just a month or two off the regular routine and there are always 'so many things to do'. Be it extensive travel seeing exotic places in India (read anywhere that requires going at least a few hundred miles from home in a Tempo van with all the uncles, aunties and wailing kids and their their toys in it) or visiting every possible relative known. Each visit to a relative is replete with bags of gifts of the men,women,kids,servants and even their kids, and a question-answer session and the usual exchange of the 'oh-she-has-grown-so-big' style pleasantries! This goes on repeat mode every year and at every relative's place. And what do the relatives do? Accept our gifts rather over-graciously ("ohhh!you shouldn't have!"), wave us good bye at the gate and then bitch about us ("that girl is getting plumper by the day,don't you think?", "they're lying through their teeth,I tel you!")
Recreation
Ha ha ha! If recreation means any of the above, then yes...vacations are surely meant for recreation! :P It's basically got something to do what people classify under recreation. For most people I grew around, recreation meant sitting for hours on end with countless relatives they hadn't seen for a while and catching up on the latest goings-on. And then there were the cinema trips. We'd get ready well in advance to enjoy the 'Indian' experience of watching a movie in a cinema hall, complete with funny red coloured popcorn, Frooti, Poppins and having to watch the entire movie through whiffs of cigarette smoke floating upwards from the lower class ticket areas in the hall. But I remember we used to love it. And the way people invariably craned their necks and scanned every possible person around them when the lights came on for the interval :D That's recreation for you. Go figure!
Travel
The most dreaded and equally 'looked forward to' part of every vacation was the travel part. Most NRIs plan one mega trip with 'family' - family would typically mean parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, their brawling kids and even nannies! Any travel without the entire pavilion in tow is 'incomplete' and 'no fun'. And if anyone wants to know what it's like to travel 'heavy', we Indians could teach them a thing or two about it,really. Home food expertly packed, Styrofoam cups and plates, no easing up on the dresses either (sarees and salwars all the way!),suitcases that might as well be called cargo boxes......and then comes the fiasco after the destination is reached. Nobody is trustworthy...and all shopkeepers are regarded with utmost suspicion.Period. People don't seem to get satisfaction out of shopping if they don't haggle a bit. In general, overseas Indians, at least the larger crowd, believe that every single thing being sold in India is over-quoted to them just because the shop keepers somehow figure out that they are not locals because of their foreign perfumes and flashy clothes.Duh! So they just HAVE to bargain. Usual drama!
Recess or Holiday
In short, the two months we spend away from routine end up being the two most hectic months of the year and are a far cry from what would be ideally called a 'recess'. Coz we want to do so many things and there is such less time! So it's a race to execute all plans. Once we get back to our work places, we are looking tired and weary, are tanned in an ugly hue that's somewhere at a weird spot between orange and peach, but are still beaming from ear to ear and are all set to start the wait for the next year's trip (Did we forget those travel catalogues to Jaipur that we bought from Bangalore?) :D
Hope everyone's planning already for their next trip.......Happy Planning,folks!
Cheers! :)
