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Journalism of Courage
In late 2020, when the tragedy of the first wave — the overnight lockdown and watching those who make our cities run, flee to rural India — had begun to ebb, I was sent on a well-deserved guilt trip. The plan was to stay at the home-away-from-home in Kumaon for about three months. Work for the first month, take a two-week break, and then back to the grind.
Phase I of the plan was glorious, enough almost to want to join Instagram. Every day, on Zoom meetings, the Himalayas would be visible, the recently-adopted dog would jump up on the desk to make himself seen. The pressures of work continued, but the clean air, mountains and stiff drink next to an open fire in the evenings meant, for once, that “work-life balance” wasn’t just about life at work. Friends were jealous, and all the loneliness that comes with being away from the city was more than made up for by the dog. The only thing to do, in phase II, was to actually spend time with oneself, try and process the impact of all that had been lost — friends and family to mortality; money, ideas, relationships.
These comically self-important ideas of “reconnecting”, “getting centred” and “me time” have been around for some time now. But during the pandemic, they were super-charged — “wellness” experts mushroomed, meditation apps got into the action like never before and the off-shoots of California spiritualism, which markets enlightenment as a way to become an amoral tech billionaire, colonised social-media posts. “Learn to spend time with yourself” became the mantra of the holiday. Thanks to the sheer mental fatigue that had taken hold a year into the pandemic, otherwise cynical, analytical souls didn’t have the energy to cut through the bullshit.
What, then, was the substance of this “me time”? Working from home in the hills is spectacular, and certainly better than doing so from a flat in the city. But a rural Himalayan winter means that in the evenings, one is housebound — there are no streetlights and there are many leopards. When it’s not a break from work, the daily walk or hike is nice, but after a point, like in the city, they become an excuse to listen to a podcast. The time meant to be spent reading and meditating became hours of mindless binge-watching. That old desire, to just have a break from work and socialising, of constantly having to “prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” ought to have been satisfied. Instead, the opposite happened.
For the better part of two years, many — if not most — people lost themselves. It was a curious time, when the mundane anxieties of the old everyday — commuting, gossiping, feuding — were replaced by more existential ones. Who are you outside of your job and your friends? Is there a being beyond your social self? A true holiday — for those fortunate enough to even conceive of one — should have been a break from those tribulations. A way to see how much, if at all, the trauma has changed us. As it turns out, there isn’t all that much left.
Unlike the enlightenment experienced there by sages long past, all I found in the Himalayas was desire and craving. For parties, for the city, for company and purpose. It was certainly an Instagram-worthy vacation. Unfortunately, it was just as shallow and ephemeral. For someone who loves the hills and has longed to spend more than a few stolen nights of long weekends there, this was a disturbing revelation. Did it mean that some of us are less-than, unable to really enjoy our own company? Unlike so many contemporaries who had moved away from the city for a simpler life, it seemed that there are some who are simply too wedded to the rat race, even though we are coming in last. As Phase II came to its disappointing end, and I returned to Zoom and work, the aforementioned guilt trip began. It takes a special kind of brat, the argument went, to have a break in the hills, to not see how amazing that experience can be. Head hung in shame, suitably chastised.
It is only now, 18 months after the “holiday” and a year since the second wave took so many from us, that things have become clear. As office begins again, the post-work hangout with colleagues, the long-planned vacation with friends, the lazy Sunday lunches with family finally have meaning again. There is a reason why the ancients prescribed leaving society, detaching from relationships, before seeking enlightenment in the wilderness.
Now, almost every spare moment is spent planning an actual holiday — which will be too short, too hectic and leave you more exhausted than rejuvenated. No, the pandemic hasn’t changed how we take a vacation. The distractions that the everyday provide are, in fact, the substance of life. COVID-19 has made it clear that life as we knew it wasn’t all that bad. And every workplace could do with a dog jumping up on the table during meetings.
