Holidays? I'll pass, thanks

Have been giving this some serious thought, and have finally decided to declare it: I hate holidays. I've had this suspicion growing on me for quite some time now -- that I am that freak of nature, the hater of holidays, but this time, I just know it. Returned from one about a fortnight back, not even one of those three-month American style ones but actually just a week-long quickie, and am still reeling from it. As in feeling the after effects. It's not just being overfed sweets by loving relatives and para-tuto kakimas (which, incidentally, has increased my chances of acquiring diabetes by age 30 by 50 pc). It's not even being unable to get back to work in earnest after the teensiest break and being told that I need a fire lit under me. And it's definitely not because I love coming back to a dysfunctional city where the autowallas and I wage constant bloody war on the streets.

I hate holidays because they disrupt the quiet routine of my life. Those who know me well may be surprised to know I have a quiet routine in my life, but I do. I love getting out of office at 6 or thereabouts, quietly sauntering down to Blossoms to look for a cheap second hand Georgette Heyer or to Koshy's to meet a friend and bitch about work over two pots of tea, or heading to the circulating library near my house that stocks old, old copies of P G Wodehouse novels. On holidays, I can't do any of that. Although I never suspected this till now, I have realised that I am very much a creature of habit. All that talk about loving an unpredictable bohemian life is just so much bullshit. Like most of the stuff I had convinced myself I like in my impressionable youth.

I hate the fact that I can't check my mail during holidays, and can't catch up on the latest controversy to hit blogosphere. I hate missing out on the familiar and comforting phone conversations -- sometimes with the very people I am meeting on my holiday, like my mom. I find myself thinking nostalgically of fighting with my Kannada-speaking maid in the morning, whose only redeeming feature is she makes my tea just so. And if I miss Bangalore at all, it's because of the weather.

Sure, it's fun to meet up with friends in Cal and sneak out for a drink when you know mom-in-law will be asleep by the time you get back. And it's fun to go to Jamshedpur pujas and have terrible chilli chicken at the stalls. But is it worth missing one whole week of obsessive Minesweeper playing? Nah!

In short, I find holidays extremely upsetting and unsettling. Must be a sign of advancing age or something, but then how can that be? My parents used to be inveterate holidayers, packing themselves and the kids off to just about anywhere practically every vacation. One reason could be that any kind of travel, be it by air or train or road, has me convinced it's going to be my last. There must be a word to describe the kind of person I am -- I get sweaty palms at each landing and take-off, can see portents (sentimental ones) in every corner that convince me I'm going to die soon and generally behave in a very morbid, Isadora Wing-kind of way. I have even woken up people travelling with me at the dead of night to make them listen to the sounds made by a speeding train and figure out if it's making the kind of sounds a soon-to-be-derailed train would make.

But wait, there needs to be an amendment here. I wouldn't dislike holidays so much if all I had to do was sit at home and read and watch movies and check up on mail and blogs and everything. Just don't put me on an airplane. That's all I ask out of life, really.