A vacation but no breaks

Heat brings with it a kind of hush, a somnolence that puts to mind lazy afternoons spent sucking mangoes chilled in buckets filled with ice-water, devouring books borrowed from libraries and exchanged with the neighbours, swatting houseflies, waiting for the endless days to turn into the welcome relief of nights. We flew kites from terraces and played with marbles on the streets. Holidays meant going “home” to the grandparents, which in our case happened to be in Rajasthan where we watched furious sandstorms build up every evening, and where sleeping on the roof offered respite from interiors baked by the sun. Letters and gossip brought the only break from desultory routine. Six weeks were ordained for this annual pilgrimage, a month if we were lucky and the parents had thought to pillion a break in the hills for a fortnight. With no other distractions, no TV, no access to foreign getaways and no choice in the matter, these holidays were accepted as a fact of life, and friends who had no one to go back to were more pitied than envied. We knew no better. 

These days, of course, families no longer seem to have any other home to go “back” to. The summer holidays have shrunk, the days appear smaller, and the idea of doing nothing would be anathema to the millennial generation. Grandparents’ homes are no longer for visiting, and the family vacation is a week in child-friendly Dubai, or trendy East Europe, negotiated between the parents’ jobs, the help going on leave, and the children’s coaching classes for everything from tennis to tabla. Not only is summer more stressful, it’s proving busier than the rest of the year, and the days no longer stretch out as they did in our childhood.

With our own kids grown up, as every year, we have a fight on our hands about where to we might take a break — if at all. The dates never match, now that four of us have to take off simultaneously from work, meetings, clients. Nor does the length; one can manage an entire week, the other barely four days, and that’s when they don’t have their own “commitments”, which is what they call their single vacations away from the family. My son is in Seattle as I write this, minding a shih tzu called Chotu for his friends as the price of accommodation in the city, only because he isn’t convinced I’ll herd the clan off when I have the chance. My daughter, meanwhile, is booking herself to Goa to meet her best friend’s boyfriend; and to Barcelona for another bestie’s bachelorette even though the wedding is several months away. My parents took two months off annually; I’m lucky if I get as many weeks off in a year, and then never continuously. 

But with so much to do — entertainment on television, movies on Netflix, visits to malls, reservations at the newest bars and restaurants, spa and salon treatments on tap – the idea of a holiday with nothing at all to do is anathema to my children’s generation. Being out in the sun, unless it’s by the sea, would invite condemnation. The concept of spending a day, or three, just reading, would suggest unusually nerdish behaviour. It is now grandparents who must visit the grandchildren, not the other way round. Mangoes are restricted to a couple of slices, at most. Fake news on WhatsApp has replaced gossip, and summer no longer brings with it hibernation. It’s still as hot, though.