Venting in a Vacation

There is something about a vacation. Something barring the fun you have and the respite you have been waiting for after being lost in the heat of action.

It is an inarticulate feeling dawning upon you when you get up on a remote island, rubbing your eyes lazily stretching yourself to a 5 am bright morning; and sheen emanates from your eyes on beholding the beauty of an open sea, seamless and unrestrained. It is the smile that issues on the lips on seeing the sight of a bark stooping double to kiss the waters contouring a stray shore treaded by a solitary fisherman. The happiness made complete with the sip of your morning tea, sipping without the curvatures of wordly tensions and problems boggling the serenity of the environs . With your backpack , you set out to tour the palce. The seven winged building unfolds an entrenched history which is so intrisic to us. The time lines and time schedules to be strictly followed only lead you to another distant island of an enchanting beauty; where, you barely manage to take shelter under a thatched roof to escape a sudden downpour and a rough beach; where, you wallow in the waters for all day long with your body smeared in the white sands; where, the aquatic life in mystifying motley colours mesmerises you and  where, the water you see reflects back in black , green and blue…Then, you do seem to forget the world above the sea. It makes you realize the kind of travel you have always wanted to undertake.

The blithe dancing away to the trance music in the beach with your age-old friends, for a moment, helps you shed your worst apprehensions and qualms in life. Zooming through the narrow lanes in a hired two-wheeler, stopping right at the restaurant, taking chance to sing to their karaoke, the best songs in your worst voices adds alacrity to the moment. Sitting inside a shack feasting on a lobster and cracking up while reminiscing childhood memories makes you bond better with the people you have shared the prime of your life. That fun is unadulterated, that moment is rejuvenating. Posing the ‘’Dil Chahata Hai” style, perched silently atop a brick of the fort overlooking the beach below, makes you realize that silence make the real conversations between friends. (It is) not the saying, but the never needing to say that counts. While returning from the flea market, the colossal sound of the waves lashing against the rocks with the approaching dusk, at the backdrop of it all, engulfs in it all the noise in your life.

It is in the oomph of the moment when a cold gale slaps against your face at a mountain pass border,  standing at a breathtaking height of 14,140 feet above the sea level at a temperature of -2 degrees Celsius. Capturing your footprints on the land in a snapshot,  cordoned by a barbed fence wire and military check posts, shrouded in the vast and rustic splendour of snow covered peaks and the barren mountain slopes is overwhelming.  The vastness and the magnificence of the Himalayas leaves you awed.  It makes you realize that  life is defined by our perspective of it.  That when we limit our own horizons,  our perspective becomes very nugatory. And then, we remain confined to our small worlds forgetting to admire the scintillating  beauty of the green pastures and the misty meadows. Or, the clouds hanging above the lake in the midst of the yaks and patrolling military tanks which lend a certain charm and mystique to the ambience. After an exciting yet exhausting long treks and wide expanse of tea plantations , there is nothing more relaxing and therapeutic than a hot and a steaming cup of tea after  gorging on sumptuous food by the fireside inside a wooden cottage. It makes you realize that life is beyond the closed chambers and the suave AC offices that we overly take pride in and use it to evade from our own selves.    

A vacation gives us a chance to attend to ourselves, a chance to introspect. It has a purgatory influence in our being. In the layered lives that we lead, it helps us be in unison with our innermost chords. It helps open the closed walls of our mind and let some life enter inside. It comes as a breath of fresh air, a solace, peace and an awakening, followed by a sense of rapture on discovering something which had been latent in us since long.  It is an elixir to our otherwise stale and mundane lives starved of exploit and exhilaration.  It rekindles an awakening in us to realize what we may have lost in the hum-drum of our life. It makes us realize things we really want from life.It is the stimulus to discern a better us.

There is definitely something about a vacation.