Discovering Our Solstice Selves in Summer

We are in the midst of that time of the year, when the world decides to take a break from work. From our usual business and home routines. Summer vacations are a part and parcel of our lives from when we were little and had breaks from school. To spend time with family. To travel and discover new places. To go spend time with grandparents and extended family who we otherwise don’t get to see that often. To do fun stuff with kids our age. Not that we weren’t also given holiday homework to do, which would be different from the usual homework, because it would usually be a fun project to immerse oneself in. Oh, and how many of us have had to return to school after our summer vacations and write the customary essay on how we spent our summer holidays!

Whoever invented summer vacations had the right idea, because it gives us a nice, long pause in our otherwise frenetic lives. Summer holidays was always from the start, time to spend with family and enjoy doing things that were out of the ordinary and fun. If only parents too found the time to take equally long summer breaks from their work! Then again, they are forced to, because of the kids’ break from school and the need to spend quality time together. Invariably, it means travel.

At least for us, it did. Summer holidays were hardly ever spent at home, but in long train journeys across the length and breadth of this beautiful country called India. I suppose I was lucky to have had my father working with the Indian Railways, as it meant free travel from anywhere to anywhere in India by first class rail. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it is an entire four sleeper-berth compartment all to yourself as a family. You simply shut the doors to your compartment and it’s like your own living room on wheels, transporting us from Guwahati in the old days to Chennai or Kerala in the south or to Mumbai in the West.

In the 1960s and 1970s, train travel in India was never straightforward; they were long winding journeys, and often meant stopping at various places to catch connecting trains or to take an overnight break. In our case, we had both my grannies travelling with us as well, which is why we never had summer holidays at our grandparents’ place. Both my grandfathers died early and my grandmums lived with us – and travelled with us – ever since I can remember.

Many of our summer holidays in our school years were spent in Mumbai, as my mum’s side of the family – even though she was an only child – were settled there, and it was a time for us to all visit and get to know them better. Many others were spent travelling to places of historical and natural interest across India that I might never have seen otherwise. My only southern sojourn as a little girl – to our ancestral village in Kerala – was a happy circumstance of our summer vacations by rail.

I think this is how summer holidays are for most people in the growing up years, and for parents, no matter where in the world they live. In the West, especially the US, children tend to go to summer camps during the holidays, while parents vacation by themselves. This way, children enjoy summer breaks with kids their own age and also learn something useful in the process, while parents get time off from parenting, I suppose! But then, children in the West usually leave home in their teens and live their own independent lives, studying and doing the odd job at the same time.

As we get older, what do summer vacations mean for most of us? In the early years of my working life in the advertising industry in India, I remember not being able to take time off when one wanted to. The pressures of work and progressing in one’s career is so important at this stage that one tends to sacrifice the annual holiday. And not all companies allow you to carry over your leave to the following year or to encash it. That said, I would still try and take a fortnight off at a time from work and this way, I had two vacations staggered during the year, instead of one long one! I figured that this was the best way to manage holiday time for myself, since an entire month off was never possible in an advertising agency. I doubt it’s feasible in any other company. And since my former, and now late, husband worked in his own tech business, it was tough for him to find time for a holiday as well. So, we found another way to spend our holidays – take short breaks of a few days to a week usually around a long weekend and traipse off somewhere nearby! From Delhi, it was usually the hills of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

I realise that this blog post is going live on Independence Day in India which could easily be a long weekend if one took a day off to make it one, and I am sure many people would be travelling. In recent decades, I notice a growing trend of people in India taking shorter breaks – not necessarily all in summer – and travelling somewhere away from the city. And many of them are road trips, or by air; the newspapers always alert us to spiking air fares due to long weekend travel!

Even then, we in India still don’t have the concept of a summer holiday or recess as they do in western countries. Where everyone understands and respects the need for people to take a longish break in summer, and the system allows for it. Surely, in western companies too not everyone can take a summer vacation at the same time, but they seem to find a way to make it happen. Perhaps people take their holidays in turns, even if it is just for a week or ten days and not an entire month.

Having travelled to the UK and Europe during the months of July and August, which are usually their official summer vacation months, I have seen how seriously they take their holidays. The cities’ streets are filled with tourists and travellers from all over the world, and that can even be a problem for local residents sometimes, as I have written in a blog post on too much tourism. So, if everyone else has descended on London, Paris and Berlin, what do the Londoners, Parisians and Berliners do? They do the same, travelling to another country or city; in the summer months, you’re most likely to find them in Southern Europe. Or maybe in the Nordic region, where summers are treasured because they are the longest days known to man, lasting until well past midnight. I know I would certainly love to travel there, and also see the Northern Lights.

Why should we Indians not care as much about our summer holidays? Summer in India is cruel and it’s too oppressively hot to be doing anything worthwhile. Some might argue it’s too hot to be travelling anywhere, and this would be true as well. But, take it from someone who has travelled quite a lot within India during the early part of her life, that India is blessed with enough travel destinations that offer refuge from the scorching sun and heat. The hilly regions of the North and the Northeast, as well as destinations in southern India of the cool and sylvan kind are worth consideration. Goa too is an excellent place to just chill and enjoy the monsoon like you’ve never experienced before. And budgets permitting, there is always overseas travel. I must add, though, that travelling solo in India as a woman is not a possibility I would consider; in UK and Europe, one feels much freer and safer.

From what I have been reading in the news about international airlines and their corporate earnings recently, they seem to be suffering from excess capacity , having over-expanded during the post-Covid surge in air travel. Airlines in the US are particularly hard-hit and so is Ryanair , Europe’s largest budget airline. Travellers can therefore look forward to really low airfares this summer, as airlines rationalise their routes and flights.

An important factor is considering what kind of summer vacation one wants. If your idea of a holiday is to travel to new destinations and discover new cultures, then most likely it will include a tour of cities. One can sightsee, visit historical sights, museums and art galleries, taste the local cuisine and soak in the atmosphere as well as meet the people. On the other hand, if your idea of a summer break is to chill, relax and unwind you would head to quiet, secluded places where not too many tourists visit and where you can relax and simply do nothing.

The merits of both are to be appreciated. If we think about it, summer vacations are about recharging our batteries. That’s what they were invented for. Time to relax, read, spend time with family or friends, and doing what you enjoy but rarely find the time for. Summer vacations are about time to yourself.

How well you spend that time ought to be apparent in how relaxed, refreshed or rejuvenated you feel when you return to work and your regular routine. There you are. It’s our regular routine and the summer holidays routine. These represent our two selves – our work-life self and our vacation-life self. Each one needs the other, so it’s time we paid more attention to what I am calling our solstice self.

In recent years, we find so many people expressing the need for a better work-life balance. By this we usually mean working hours vs leisure time for ourselves and our families. We have not yet extended the argument to also include summer holidays or the annual vacation. And yet, it is clearly essential for us to be able to recharge our batteries, so we can enjoy all other dimensions of our lives as well. It is not the same as work-life balance on a day-to-day basis. The summer or annual holiday is concentrated you-time, focused on just you, your interests and what you love doing in order to unwind.

Stop. Take time off for your own sake and the ones you love. Allow your solstice self, free expression.

This article first appeared on my blog on August 15, 2024.