This was the big break I was waiting for. It did not happen as I had wished for, but, nevertheless, a break is a break. I had always fathomed a break like this, a sabbatical – one where I would sleep for hours, watch movies, eat, read, or just do nothing but stare at the ceiling fan for hours.
Though I did all of that, this break was also a big, big learning experience for me. For 22 years, evenings have always been the most hectic for ‘news-lings’ like me. Evenings had always been the time — on any typical working day — of planning, slotting, selecting news for the next day’s edition, screaming, shouting at juniors (which shifted to WhatsApp after WHF), endless phone calls, a mad race for the deadline, high-blood pressure and an adrenaline rush.
Suddenly, the evenings had become free. It seemed someone had removed a 1,000-quintal weight from my head. I felt as if I was on a high after a tequila shot. It was a strange feeling difficult to describe in words, but it felt real light.
For the initial few days, I enjoyed every bit of it. I would take a stroll and observe people, watch some content on the big and small screens, visit every possible readable portal in the world, keep guard when my son studied, star-gaze (whenever pollution blew away) or stared at the ceiling as I had wished.
But old habits die hard, as they say. The age-old adage really came true for me. As evenings descended, I would get fidgety. It became difficult to kill time by doing nothing or staring at the ceiling or watching TV.
A workaholic I was, I tried to get creative in stuff other than what I have been doing for aeons. Starting to pen – or rather a type — my thoughts, as suggested by my wife, was one of them. And that is how ‘The Big Rebel’ was born. For a moment, I wondered – ‘Who would want to read my thoughts?’ The next moment, my rebellious nature told myself – ‘Who cares if someone doesn’t? I will read myself’.
Investing time in the kitchen was another creative ‘time-pass’ I would say. Trying out various recipes after browsing the internet is easier. The most difficult part is keeping the kitchen tidy after your culinary experiment, which I learnt from wifey dear.
I leant how to keep coriander leaves and other leafy vegetables fresh for a week – not by just stashing it in the fridge, mind you. As we are in the middle of Covid, you got to wash (read sanitise) them first. Next, spread them on a cotton towel and fan-dry with not a single drop of water left. After that, you chop them as per your required size and store them in an air-tight container in the fridge. And all that needs patience and time (which I had aplenty).
I learnt that kneading dough is a science, plating is art, dosa is perfection and patience personified, baking is a combination of art and science, and biryani is nothing less than a magnum opus, an epic. And how to cut veggies properly — the right size, shape – is craftsmanship.
I recalled those days of yore and my childhood when any household chore would be a joint effort of the family and how my dad would fix any damaged item in the house without calling any outside help. I tried my hand at repainting our old cane sofa and it came out quite good. Buoyed by the success, I treated a wooden stand infested by wood borers without any specialist assistance.
I rediscovered the joy of going on an evening stroll and observing people in their random moments — kids playing and quarrelling, people chatting and heading to the market for their daily needs, looking at the sunset, chirping of birds as they fly in patterns to their nests. Things I had forgotten had ever existed.
The list of achievements can go on and on, but the biggest of them all was clearing old, useless papers and documents that I had been holding to like dear life because of the unfounded apprehension and anticipation that I just might need these someday. A humongous task that took me more than a decade to accomplish, maybe also because of my dreaded, procrastinating nature.
Phone bills older than 15 years, letters, receipts, home rent agreements, empty folders, packets and whatnot. Stuff that fitted in some 20 different packets now is all in one bag. 90% of it was junk. And the feeling I experienced after the near-impossible job was done was somewhat similar to that after bringing out a good edition – all thanks to dear wifey’s relentless push.
The break was really worth it, after all.
The author is an independent journalist based in Delhi.
