BY SANKHYAYAN DATTA

Several health studies have shown that holidays can improve sleep quality. They can reduce blood pressure and stress levels in addition to diminishing the risk of heart disease in both men and women. When I think of holidays, albeit not even remotely synonymous, unwinding springs to my mind. The ways I wind down to replenish my rechargeable batteries are largely binary: more active than lazy.

Back in the not so dim yet distant past, besides (at least) a-two-week family vacation, school recess almost invariably, and inarguably, began with an ear-numbing cacophony of alarms – always raucous and never melodic – due to summer camps. Table tennis, swimming or using oil pastels to draw landscapes, animals and still life, warts and all. In another year, trying to train my then deadpan voice after a not so little afternoon kip. Plosive and propulsive. And oh, reading copious amounts of fiction deep into the night. I would burn the candle at both ends quite literally for over two months to feel reinvigorated.

Not an awful lot has changed since. In the relatively recent past, holidays meant rubbing elbows with the art world cognoscenti for over 12 hours a day in some French museum admiring oeuvres of Italian megaliths, attempting to stay afloat in turquoise waters when not stuffing my face at an all-inclusive resort to get the loudest bang for my buck or peering into blue ice on a guided glacier hike. In 2015, my feet throbbed with pain for over a week after my 88-day summer sojourn during which I walked at least half a dozen miles a day every day often lugging around my 65:85 backpack big enough to fit a toddler.

This year’s summer break was different. I had a diurnal socially-distanced staycation – my first ever – that included, not in any particular order, Netflix series, 10k trots, patting other people’s pets, listening with nearly equal enthusiasm to Ludovico Eunadi and riffs on racism, politics and economy, pertaining to an incorrigibly digressive linchpin, reading about a shibboleth of the Polish anti-LGBT+ discourse, unwittingly drinking almost 2L of a Czech drink at an urban riverside beach while motorboats whirred past, and last but not least, tactically eating (but not gobbling down) Far Eastern delicacies at an all-you-can-eat restaurant. And although my break was much lazier than before and axiomatically less healthy, I think I would still like to top my “new normal” holiday off with a knickerbocker glory…

Notwithstanding the difference, my “new normal” days off work were similar to what I had pictured them to be. And in line with my two questions toward the top of this page, I hope you enjoyed your time off and that it was closer to what you had wished it to be – whether you had a staycation or splurged on a private luxury yacht on the other side of the world - SD