I haven’t taken a vacation for ages now. It has been work and shit-loads of it. One of the most annoying things about the corporate world is this almost hysterical obsession with duty. The bugging sense of accountability. Attending to it. Creating stuff, in my case, on an hour-to-hour, day-to-day, week-to-week basis. Unrelenting in your endeavor. Trying to create value and capital for your organization and helping them help themselves to bloat their bottom-lines. The modern man has been reduced to that -- a mechanical creature, who works like an assembly line -- for someone else.
I’ve been lucky enough to be bestowed with a few creative bones. They keep me in good shape. Sub-consciously I always try to stave-off these demons of value creation, that drain your energy and time. Still I think I need to re-condition myself. Delhi is a huge, humid, haphazard metropolis that can distract you from reality and cut you from the roots. People perpetually keep hammering away at life here -- on the traffic signals, underneath over-bridges and across the road -- in those little cubby-hole shops. It is a constant commotion.
So all my bags are packed for destination Kashmir. A very enviable chunk of land, whose people are a little touched but sweet. It is full of butterflies and gossip but I don’t mind such hare-brained distractions, as long as it is naïve. Inwardly you sketch a smile at their rather simplistic perspective of life, which is mostly sappy. And you know that however hard you try to, you cannot unbelong to them. Slowly you end up loving the quietude of the place.
Amidst these pastoral settings, I am going to attend two weddings of two incredible people. Four really, their spouses included. Two of my closest pals are tying the knot. It is going to be loads of fun and frolic and feasting. The finger-licking Wazwan. And I shall try to stay connected to my blog -- and post -- while in Kashmir.
