Last couple of days of my vacation. Oh! I don’t want to get back to work again. Two weeks leave is a luxury, they tell me. . . that too my fifth one this year. And I still don’t feel rested. I feel more tired than I did when I went without a leave for one full year and without a weekend off for eight weeks in a row. And now, here I am. Ten days off in January, twelve days in March, two weeks in April, practically the entire month of May off, two weeks off again in June, and now two weeks spread over September and October. Well, April, May and June, I was sick, all the same those were weeks away from work.
To feel tired after having such a vacation spaced year, that’s not me. I just cannot make myself look forward to work. There is just one sentence repeating again and again at the back of my head – I need a break. And this one week and two week thing ain’t doing me any lasting good. For the most part, I have been a tired heap on my bed – a sleep deprived soul you’d think, who can never have enough of bedtime. I haven’t even visited the blog world, and my favorite blogs in the last few weeks.
I have managed to read a few books and watch some movies playing on TV though. I also did go out to witness the
Puja festivities one day. It has been a full seven years since I was last home during
Durga Puja . . . looking back, the years have just flown by. Years, full of friends made and lost, full of beautiful blends of happiness and sadness, triumphs and setbacks, holidays and work, exams and excursions, books and clothes, travel and movies, newspaper and TV . . .
I have felt tired earlier too, but never for so long at a stretch. A weekend off, a week of travel to new places or Christmas vacations with family have always rejuvenated me. But now, I have been tired for a year. I do need a break – a long one this time. Like Liz may be, though our circumstances are very different.
That is the thing that struck me as I was reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s
‘Eat Pray Love’. Sometimes very different circumstances can evoke very similar emotions in people. A friend had recommended it as a good one time read last fall. It had slipped off my mind as I was engrossed in Alan Greenspan’s Age of Turbulence then. Suddenly, my mind went back to that recommendation when I read in the local newspaper at the Delhi airport at the start of my vacation, that Julia Roberts was in India, to shoot for this movie. A few days later, I picked up a copy at Howrah station, when waiting to board the train from Kolkata for Patna.
Gilbert has dwelt in a little detail on traditional Hindu meditation and spiritualism, as well as local Bali customs. I couldn’t agree more with her on her thoughts about satisfying spiritual and material needs at the same time.
Should I take one year off too? May be read, travel, learn new languages or new crafts. I don’t know. . . I am still contemplating. Any ideas, suggestions are very welcome.