When my office was in Gurgaon, just behind our office there was a smallish ground. At just about 4:30 pm kids used to come out there to play. They used to play football. Nowadays these kids wear branded T-shirts with some arbid number and name of some renowned footballer written at the back. (My knowledge on football is close to pathetic. The other day, somebody said Ronaldo is the best player, I disagreed and said, "Sachin at 36 is still the best.")
While I am merrily typing away this blog, I realised that I truly deserve a summer holiday (for at least two months). I was reminiscient of my summer holidays when I was in school.
Typically the day before the closure of the school, we used to organise a little get -together at school. Everyone used to bring some speciality or the other. It used to be an exciting day. No prizes for guessing why. And the day was punctuated with holiday homeworks being loaded on by teachers ensuring that the misery of the school shall continue. May be the logic was to keep the brain well oiled throughout the holidays, so that little brains dont go dead. Quite an unrealistic assumption. Later I realised that in India, we are constantly trying to guide children into structures and patterns.
The next day was to be a new day & planning would begin on full swing. The kid who would have to be hustled out of his cozy bed and made to stand with droopy eyes with a toothbrush laced with an equally drowsy looking toothpaste, the same kid would be up and running with a bat and ball at sharp 5:30 am. I was one of them. We would play till 9 and return home dirty and tired. After lunching it was time for some holiday home work. Oh, How much I hated it. There was a time in school, when I had to do something called "Cursive handwriting", which would run into pages. Why do they torture the kids with that, rather it could have been given to the Doctors who scribble on a letterhead decorated with alphabets they call "degrees" and then call it a prescription.
One would try to finish these repetitive jobs as soon as possible to have a more peaceful vacation. There was also time for a really long and never ending afternoon nap. By the time, you were awake, Mother was ready with a thirst quenching drink - it could be rasna, nimboo paani or aam panna. In the intermittant time between this late afternoon and evening, you would want to finish off those lingering holiday home works. (Silly teachers I must say).
Evening were set with matches with cricket teams of nearby colonies. They were tense and emotionally draining. (I started the trend of exchanging players for our internal matches and over time we were able to master them......Before Lalit Modi it was me who started the cricket league). When we returned, we could peacefully watch two hours of uniterrupted TV. DD ruled the roost and the audience lapped it up whatever came their way. But whether it was holidays or not, food was served at sharp 8 (Surprisingly we still follow that rule). And post that we would take walk in the night around the colony. Over time the seemingly innocent paths of night walks found their valid reasons of diverting them strategically behind the colony girls.
In between, we would also visit my cousins. Those were fun. Me and Aravind(at our age today) are still considered the most insane pair of cousins to have ever taken birth in the family clan (if at all we can call the world our fiefdom...but then of course nobody respects our fiefdom....lol). Our most infamous incident is when both of us finished an entire crate of panneer soda (Rose water soda) at my cousin's marriage. The soda was meant for the cooks who were getting parched inside a kitchen where food for about 500 people was being prepared with a fireplace in peak June heat and that too in Srirangam....There are other horror stories of how our senseless debates would undermine the most urgent work at hand (I guess, thats why both of us are not fit to be superheroes...god save the universe then...). We would also visit our more affluent cousins in Delhi where my little wants of exotic toys would get fulfilled ...even if those were for just a week, but I guess I never wanted those toys for more than a week anyways....
Every two years, we would also visit Chennai and nearby places as part of my father's LTC. The journey spanned 36 hours and gyrated through the beautiful landscape of mera pyaara bharat. It was an experience in itself. The day we are to leave, Mom would spend the whole day making food for the journey, so that we could spend as little as possible on eatables outside. Dad would call for the Taxi at least 3 hours and we would be at the station at least 2 hours before the departure. At the station we would shop for magazines and eagerly await our train. The whole build up of excitement waiting to board a second class compartment as compared to today's executive class journey in airplanes is still a million miles away. The whole concept of LTC for home town was quite a misnomer as far as we (me and my sister) were considered. For us, Chennai was alien land, where people spoke a foreign language, wore lungis, were perinnially drenched in sweat and smelled of Jasmine flowers. By no means I am demeaning my Tamil land. But we were a confused identity.
By the time the vacations would conclude, the sweet memories of vacations would get bulldozed by the piling holiday home work. Alot of it would consist of making charts and wierd looking science models which were eventually marked and dumped by the school stuff (Only certain privelged ones had theirs pasted on the walls of the class rooms. Well, your truly was a legend as far as chart making was concerned). The last few days were spent relentlessly in shopping for shoes, stationary, uniforms, school bags, pencil boxes and of course the most coveted possession of all - "Milton Water Bottle".
And thats how I spent most of my summer vacations. Today, I am pushing myself out of the bed at 7:30 Am, fighting the traffic for an hour to somehow make it to office by 9 am, from 9 to whenever time the day ends I am earning my bread and fall dead by the time I reach home.
Today morning I met Ishan, "Hey what are you doing downstairs so early?"..Ishan replied, "I have my summer holidays, I can do whatever I want....."...And then my mother cried from behind, "Here is your lunch, you are getting late to office...."....the smile on Ishan's face and the despair written over mine, just about underlined my misery
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