When I was growing up, holidays would be an annual ritual. Bags packed and all ready to go. Tickets checked and rechecked. At the station at least an hour before time. Checking the railway charts. Feeling a sense of tingle in the tummy as the train approached the platform. Boarding the train and beginning to munch away to glory as the train would chug off, excited to meet relatives, have a blast with cousins, and bond on an annual basis.
Now, holidays are all about exotic locations. Poor Alibaug, Kerala, Simla, Gangtok, Jaipur and all have vanished from our wishlist. We want Bali, Maldives, Singapore, Dubai, London, Paris, Rome to be ticked off as soon as possible. Even if it means that we’ve not even discovered a fraction of what India offers.
Holidays, in the past would mean a break from the grind of our daily lives in the simplest fashion possible. It wouldn’t mean spending bucketfuls of money on airfares and all of that. Simple train tickets with homemade food to boot would be the real deal. Months of meticulous planning, queuing up for confirmed tickets would just throw a blanket of ‘can’t-control’ kind of excitement all over the house.
Today, that excitement is rather missing. One fine day the office calendar indicates a break and an impromptu foreign vacation is conceived. A few clicks of the ever-loyal mouse and the deal is signed, sealed and delivered. From impulsive shopping, our generation has moved on to impulsive holidaying. We swear by package tours. It’s hassle-free afterall. Tickets are taken care of, itinerary fixed, accommodation and food all set — we just have to be there and have fun. After paying for it, of course. For us, the grander, the better.
One purpose of going on vacations is the ‘much-needed’ break that all of us keep referring to. Another motive, that all of us secretly harbour, is to shout from the rooftops and tell people, “Hey, we’re going on phoren tourâ€. To do that, we don’t literally have to climb clock towers and all. All we need to do is login to facebook and post minute by minute updates. Simple. With internet on the go and smartphones to aid us, that’s breezy. We check into airports virtually and from there on, we are on mission ‘spam timelines’ and ‘infest mankind with jealousy’. We boast and brag till the world and its wife can’t take it anymore.
And then, we’ve kind of ditched the Indian Railways altogether. We make faces while referring to the stench and lack of hygiene. We only and only travel by air, you see, like we were born in an aircraft and raised in one too. “Oh airfares are so cheap today,†we say and make the best of our vain faces. But then, there’s some truth to that as well. With airfares becoming more affordable, our phoren-vacation dreams have definitely started taking wings.
But I still miss the half of a Bharat darshan that I’d get traveling from Guwahati to Palakkad on trains. The fact that I can plan a holiday just about whenever I want has kind of robbed me of the excitement that I would dwell in years back.