I have been pondering over a good topic to write about since a long time.. and it just struck me.. why DO I have all this time to ponder? Its because its vacation right now! (bless these sweet times..) And its such a great thing to write about. All of us have attachments and longing towards vacations and beautiful memories that go with it. Here are some of my thoughts on why it holds a special place in our hearts..
1. It brings life back on track
There is a reason why this is the No.1 on my list (or anyone else's if they think similarly). Non-vacation times is when usually I'm either attending a semester at university or working. For graduates students like myself, school is more stressful and busier than work life. It also hurts socializing. Let alone meeting new people, I usually fall back on keeping in touch with my existing friends. This doesn't end very prettily when I have to, later, wade among fights and misunderstandings to remind them that I DO care about them :)
Absolutely no time to think about health, exercise or a balanced diet. Pizza becomes the savior on the days of deadlines and umpteen assignments. Hail Papa Johns!
And about the "busier than work" part, yes working for a company does seem a lot more streamlined than slogging day and night at school. But its got its own cons like, you have to get up on time each day to go to work whereas in school, the day can end at 5 am and begin at noon \m/ Working = constant work+sleep, Studying=highly variable work(increasing as the semester progresses) + sleep(decreasing) monotonically earlier and then exponentially during "dead week".
Bottomline is.. vacation gives us a chance to catch up on beauty sleep and quit the regime that makes us look like coding zombies fueled by coffee.
2. Family and Friends time
Most Indian students fly back home as soon the end of semester looms near - to be surrounded by the loving care and pampering of parents, siblings and friends. And of course, the thing that we crave for... delicacies like Cheese Pav Bhaaji with sinfully buttery pav, Roadside bhaiyya wali Chaat, Triple Schezwan Rice in a small shady hole-in-the-wall "indian-chinese" restaurant and the hot-roasted chana-mungfali in Rs.1 or Rs.2 paper cones! Okay I'm kinda drifting away from the sub-topic here :D
Nothing beats seeing your parents' proud faces when you arrive home from school in other parts of the nation or world. In my case, I was sweating like a pig and covered in soot-like dirt that stuck because of that sweat when I waded my way out of the Mumbai airport. My mom had specially worn a saree just to greet me :) and then my dad displayed some extraordinary driving skills to make our way out of the airport boundary in Andheri, which alone took us an hour. But I was home and I'd missed every bit of its liveliness that stays on even into the wee hours of the night.
This winter break, I stayed on campus itself and spent quality time with my room-mates and their sets of friends who kept replacing earlier sets in our apartment-cum-free-accommodation-for-others :)
Coming back home, we stayed up most of the night playing card games, poker or watching movies and sitcoms (just the feeling that I have 3 hours to spend simply staring at the screen lazily is more awesome than the movie itself!)
The cherry on the icing was I had a car at my disposal to just whip out and hit the road even at the slightest craving to do something in the evenings.
3. Exploring Mother Nature and beautiful places
The remaining most obvious perk to vacations is getting to travel to exotic places or go hiking up mountain ranges or down river valleys. I visited Smoky Mountains during Fall break where the changing colors of the leaves and watching the sunset from the topmost altitude was a treat to the eyes!
I want to know what you guys value the most about vacations.. please comment and add to it :) A song to end the post..
I think I'll leave it 'til tomorrow to unpack Try to forget for one more night that I'm back in my flat On the road where the cars never stop going through the night To a life where I can't watch the sunset I don't have time, I don't have time
