A LONG VACATION

Once in the stream of life, we ground to paste as it were by the pressures of work coupled with anxiety, apprehension and doubt. So the senses are benumbed and we become a cog in the big wheel. That is the price we pay for modernity. Ask any office and factory worker, he will have a story to tell. The same dull routine for five days a week. Very often he has no time to talk to his parents, to look after his children. To take the edge out of it, there must be periodical vacation.

But the vacation to be of any meaning must be long enough. Ideally speaking it is not to idle away one must seek a vacation. It must be an occasion when something useful could be done. Of course it may not be out of compulsion or pressure from outside but one chooses the vacation so that a good thing may be achieved.

What I have in mind is something like this. When someone chooses a long vacation he must have a plan for spending it. One must go on a long pilgrimage visiting places of historic or religious interest or for the Muslims to go on Haj pilgrimage. While others may want to spend their time with their children, married children and grand-children who are now staying in a foreign country. There it is best that they travel in a leisurely way. Seeing places and perhaps getting into the spirit of it, unlike a modern tourist. A vacation spent on tour must be different.

Again, some vacations are utilised for some useful study. It may be specialising in any branch of the discipline in which one is interested. For instance, if one is interested in archaelogy one may visit the places of interest. This may take him to the libraries, familiarise himself with the thoughts on the subject. Those who prepare a dissertation do that way.

May be the vacation is taken for some constructive work. One may go to the village and look to the repairs of the ancient family house.

While the vacation may be worthwhile it must be free from constraints or restraints otherwise it loses the spirit of vacation. It is the mental attitude which is very important. When one returns after the vacation one must look fresh and full of life and not jaded like a storm mariner returning home.

After what all has been said and done the outcome must be a happy one.