Being AWOL isn't much fun

We are all, as you read this, AWOL, a spontaneous family rebellion against the crippling claustrophobia and corporate babudom of office. All but my son, that is, who refused to join in the clan protest because, as he said plaintively, “I don’t have any more leave left, Dad, not even a half-day, or a few hours, so if it’s all right, I’ll go attend office. Besides,” he pointed out, “some of us still need to bring a salary home.” He is, at heart, an office-bee, but please don’t tell him this because he is sensitive about such matters. The one day he decided he wanted to be as impulsive as the rest of us, he declared he would go late to work — and he did. By all of 15 minutes.

This morning, his wife decided to join the kinfolk at their sit-in, by sitting it out. I’m not sure whether she’s part of our dissent group or not because she left at her usual office hour, saying she was “visiting”. Maybe she’s only humouring us and has gone to work, or maybe she has genuine errands to run. Eventually the truth will be out. She’s partial to whisky, you see, and I plan on having a conversation with her when she’s on her second tot this evening. 

At first I was alone so being AWOL didn’t feel like much fun. There were piles of books to read, so I did that over a couple of days while bingeing on Netflix intermittently. But these are guilty pleasures and less fun when you can do them legitimately, on your own time. So I brooded a bit, nagged the cook, told off the maali, poured myself a couple of G&Ts, pottered around the study, OD’d on caffeine, smooched around for unhealthy things to eat and was bored by the third day. 

Which is when I pestered my daughter to skip office on the spur-of-the-moment, which she did with a text to her supervisor. But being the conscientious type, she’s been wracked by remorse since. Worse, being an organised person, she doesn’t know what to do with the free time that’s come her way out of the blue. So she’s mooning around the house while being critical of its upkeep and maintenance instead of catching a movie, or heading to the mall for some retail therapy. It seems she enjoys these things only when she’s under pressure, so it might be better if she returned to work, but it’s a weekend now so her joylessness will cast a gloom over the next days. 

My wife decided to go AWOL too, even though she works out of home, fleeing to Pune for a one-day event that is next week. When someone — I think it was me — pointed out that perhaps she didn’t need to go so many days early, my wife pretended she’d mixed up her dates, and what with non-cancellable flights and cab bookings, it was all fait accompli, so she’d try and make the most of it even though she hated leaving us alone. It sounded like a well-executed getaway, leading me to think my daughter and I should have planned our absences better. Meanwhile, there’s still the matter of my daughter-in-law to clear up — if she’s AWOL, why isn’t she as miserable as us?