Magical Summers. Review on Tips for Having Good Vacation

The sound of children shouting joyfully on their way home from school rings in the air. The warm smell of wet earth has announced the start of the monsoon, and before visiting, a friend emails asking ‘Do I need to bring light woollies?’

Summer with its heat and dust and sweat, watermelons, annoying air conditioning sales calls, sleepy afternoons, school holidays and whining kids, golden mangoes and frequent power cuts, summer which seemed to stretch on in an endless stream of hot sticky days, is officially over, and with it, holidays are over too!

Most people are incredulous when I say I enjoy summers – disbelieving looks and dismissive laughs are all too common reactions, but inspite of the heat, I find a lot to love about this season, and one of the nicest reasons is the summer holidays.

The summer holidays see me heading back home to the village. The rest of my family does that too, bringing along staff to help, and a dozen eager children. The big old house fills with the smells of cooking and echoes with sounds of laughter and conversation, surely as it was always meant to be.

At first coping with village life is hard on us adults and children alike. We are so used to scheduling every minute of our day, and having readymade entertainment at our fingertips that a whole day stretching out in front of us, with very little to do is quite frightening; I consult my laptop every half hour, and the children squat on the ground in front of the TV desperately switching channels.

But then phone lines die, and power-cuts kick in, and there is no more ‘work’ or TV or any of the mod-cons we take so much for granted in the city, not even a ‘soft drink’, unless you want a ‘Bovonto’ or some other local offering from the neighbourhood tea shop. Then somebody starts talking, and then one more person does, and slowly the frayed ends of bonds worn out by distance start knitting together again. We search out childhood friends and plan get-togethers with each others’ families, and we all very willingly step back into a time when life was simpler, our parents knew everything, and the cares of the ‘real’ world were far away.

The children are not individual shapes but one mass of sweaty limbs huddled together in a corner of the veranda, positioned carefully to catch the breeze from lazy overhead fans. Soon they start to invent games or rediscover old and forgotten ones like ‘pallanguli’ and even Ludo. They start asking for endless tumblers of delicious coconut water and buttermilk instead of Coke, throw stones to bring down raw mangoes for the evening’s pickle, hunt for peacock’s feathers under the chikoo trees and run off to the farm to splash about in the water gushing out of fat pipes.They look forward to thatha’s hunting stories and amamma’s pampering, and to nights with no sleep time curfews, and days where breakfast is laid out till lunch and card games that go on till 3 in the morning.

Conversation with cousins flows easier, nicknames are doled out, younger siblings are bullied and nobody talks about being bored anymore. They learn to share and work around each other’s needs, and best of all, the TV is forgotten and they start to read! When the day ends, they reluctantly come indoors burnt black from the hot sun, smiling, tired and happy in the knowledge that life is very very good.

This is not everybody’s idea of the ideal holiday, I know, but lazy holidays with family, away from the city, can be very special.

- If you can take a break, take your break to be with people you care about – this to me is the best way to make summer bearable.Let children hang about with other children and with their grandparents, and plan to spend time with family members you might not see for ages otherwise. It makes for great memories. Anyway, unless you can escape to the hills, every ‘somewhere’ is hot, so there’s really no point going on exotic holidays and sitting indoors.

- Keep plenty of unscheduled time for yourself and the family just so that everybody can unwind and laze about and relax with days that are not full of planned entertainment. Take along books you always wanted to read, and plenty of (non-battery operated) games.

- Get back as close to nature as you can. By this I don’t mean packing rock climbing and trekking and leaf gathering into your day and coming back to a campfire in the evening, but rediscovering the softer, gentler kind of life one can still find in small towns and villages, and is successfully recreated in some resorts.

• I know we can’t live without our cell phones, but do ditch your laptop, and don’t call work. As difficult as it is to believe, you are not indispensable.

- Give yourself a chance discover what you are really like, shorn of all the material comforts you fill your life with. The simpler pleasures of life can very often be the best!

Sadly like everything else, life moves on and summer also passes. Most people miss the holidays but not the season. For me they are both inseparable, and even though I greatly look forward to the warm showers that cut the day’s heat, summers are special, and are sorely missed. It always hurts to say goodbye to the magical summer…till the next year.

This was written as a nostalgic reference to the kind of holiday that many of us have forgotten to take as we go in search of ’exciting’ breaks in ’exotic’ destinations. It might seem to have come at an odd time, ie., when the holiday season is over, but it was ready to post several weeks ago- I just couldn’t bear to do it during the ’Go to Goa’ frenzy.