Holidays….are you having fun?

The other day I was having a conversation about holidays with a friend, who mentioned how her husband loved to visit every tourist spot mentioned in Lonely Planet whenever they travel. While in a way that does make the trip interesting and more worthy of all the money that one spends in going to a new place, my idea of a holiday is slightly different. In fact to think about it, my idea of ‘fun’ on a holiday has changed drastically over the years and I have broadly tried to summarise my perception of ‘fun’ for every decade of my life:

Upto 10 years: During this phase we took a lot of family holidays (almost every weekend) in our bungalow in Lonavla, which was like second home for me. Besides that my parents used to take us to other nearby hill stations like Mahableshwar, Matheran (near Mumbai, Maharashtra) and to our religious shrine in Udavada, Gujarat. We also did a few international trips to places like Singapore, Hong Kong, Nepal and Malaysia. But wherever I went a big must for every holiday for me, was the presence of my mother. I would refuse to go anywhere on a holiday without her. Mum meant safety, mum meant love. Mum meant that all my needs were taken care of, so all I had to do was play and have fun and of course a bit of studies too as mum always took insisted on taking our study books along….well most of time! But I didn’t mind that, I didn’t mind where we went or what we did, as long as she was with me. Mum was my ‘fun’ factor at this age and I always loved to have her around!

With my mother and elder sister

11-20 years: Holidays at this age meant spending time with my books and my dogs. My mother always encouraged my love for dogs since she was a big animal lover herself. Any abandoned stray puppy that we would find around our colony and who looked fit enough to be adopted would be taken to Lonavla and kept there at our bungalow under the care of our gardener. In fact at one point of time I had seven dogs out there and I used to spend my entire holiday washing, cleaning, petting and loving them and going for long walks with them. I loved reading books too, mostly fiction and I progressed from the Nancy Drew, Secret Seven books to Mills & Boon and Sidney Sheldon ones. Books were meant to be read and dogs were meant to be pet and I could spend my entire holiday doing just that!

My very faithful and protective dog- Khandoba (named by my gardener)

21-28 years: This was the ‘exploring’ decade when I wanted to do everything possible on a holiday. From sight seeing, to shopping, to eating, to partying – I wanted to cover it all. Fancy hotels, thrilling adventures, late night shows, basically anything and everything except sleeping was ‘fun!’ During this time I went on holidays with family, holidays with friends, work travel with my modelling assignments and also with my job. Life was busy and revolved completely around me! I obviously had no idea how things were about to change.

29 years- now:
I became a mother at 29. I went for my first holiday with my one-month old and all I wanted to do to have ‘fun’ is to sleep. Sleep the whole night atleast, and if possible take naps during the day too. ‘Fun’ meant relaxation. ‘Fun’ meant sitting down for an extended period, whether it was to have a proper meal or to rest my back, without having to do anything, like do nothing. I know it sounds quite boring, specially after my idea of fun the decade before, but it was as if my whole world changed overnight and with it my priorities – with that tiny hand holding mine, nothing in life became as important as taking care of him and being with him. ‘Fun’ was to watch him laugh, ‘fun’ was to rush to his side at his slightest whimper, to watch his big eyes look back at me, to stroke his soft, black hair and to hold him tight in my arms. It’s been eight years now and being a mum of two, holiday is ‘fun’ when I can spend time with my husband and sons, eating big buffet breakfasts that I haven’t cooked, going to the beach and then watching these three boys in my life swim and have fun in the sea while I catch up on a book, ‘fun’ is doing bicycling rides and having picnics, watching the sun go down together and taking lots of photographs and finally at the end of the day ‘fun’ enjoying a glass of wine with a relaxed meal and finding some time to write my blog. Then when I come back home if somebody happens to ask me “How was your holiday Mehroo?” I would promptly reply “It was so much fun!!”

To sum it up I have put up a poll (on the top right hand side of this page) on what you would prefer to do on your holidays. You could either select one or multiple answers … it would be ‘fun’ knowing what the majority chooses!