On the brink of the festivities, ANUPAMA CHANDRA talks about the importance of breaks to energise our lives

Sometimes it feels like your entire life is charted out for you with minimal contribution from—you guessed it— you! You get up when the alarm goes off, and the toothpaste tingles your tongue’s senses, and the water is just right in the shower. Within a few minutes your coffee is ready in the machine and the toast is crunchy on your plate. Sooner than later, the car is waiting at the door tooting its horn and off you go to school, college, work…your place du jour. Sounds like a perfect start to a great day, doesn’t it?

Only, there is only so much one can take of all these perfect starts to great days of work and studies and what have you. By and by, your mind gets bored, your senses jaded and you crave for a ‘break’. It starts with you surreptitiously peeking into the office holiday list and planning a sojourn to revive the soul.

Or maybe it will just have to be a quick weekend buzz stop at a nearby local touristy spot and back to the grind as the week dawns. Or maybe, if you are too busy for all this, it will be the day your body summons a disease beckoned by the stress of the routine and has your doctor order you to retire hurt temporarily from work and surrender to the cool confines of your cosy bed. So, actually while your work is written for you, you script how you rest.

But…do people really want a break?

“Are you kidding? They are the most important which even a one-month holiday seems justified,” businessman Shravan makes a point. “I distinctly remember in my sixth standard when my extended family went to Vaishno Devi in our summer holidays. What fun we had, all of us cousins! Plus, the elders decided to extend

Marking the passage of time

“Our city has only two seasons—summer and the monsoons. It is by the festivals that we mark our calendars,” opines Royston, poetically. “My neighbour starts preparing for the Ganpati utsav and I know that major festivities have officially opened for the year. Mamma starts readying to visit the Bandra fest and I know September has arrived with Mother Mary’s birthday. Dussera just went by with dandiya music and piercing sounds of conch shells and drum beats lending the music of the Devi’s puja to the skies. My American cousins were busy preparing for Halloween end of October while my family will tarry a little longer till Christmas.

“My music students and I personally celebrate the various music and cinema festivals that dot our entire year,” concludes the teacher of western classical music. “These secular festivals are no less divine than the rest to us, and we get a much-needed break from the cacophony of our daily toil, so that we can return to the same again with renewed vim and vigour.”

Whatever the reason, whatever the season, if our routine organises our lives, our breaks from it energise them. Let’s celebrate this tapestry called life just the way it is meant to be — one measure of work, followed by one measure of rest and repeat…till it is break time permanently.