April.04 : I hope you have done it. I hope you have already made plans. In fact, I sincerely hope you’ve all made your relevant bookings. In case you haven’t, I’ll deliver the bad news gladly. There are no deals left. Repeat, there are no deals left. Repeat, there are no deals left once more, just in case you are hard of writing. “No deals left.”

The date is the fourth day of April, known in some cultures as Easter. In other cultures as Sunday. Traditionally the world over Easter marks the day when you plan your summer vacation. Whether you are Obama or Osama, Easter is the trigger that lets you know you have got to haul the missus and the little ones (some of whom may be your own) off to the annual summer vacation. That damn annual summer vacation. Put there to bleed fathers dry. A trap in which they have to spend every waking hour with the wife and kids and are denied any other buffer person, except for hotel staff, who in any case start looking like the wife and kids after a few days. That damn summer vacation is always overpriced and overlong.
Why am I so scarred? So stigmatised? So stricken? The answer is very simple and, like most things in life, it goes back to my first experience. The first summer vacation.
Let’s now turn the clock back to a far happier time. A time when butterflies were free, still lived in India, and Yuvraj Singh had some batting form. I speak of the late 70s, the time of my first vacation. A time which scarred me even though I wasn’t paying for it.
In 1978, if you lived in Mumbai, by law your vacation had to compulsorily be held in the tiny remote hamlet of Mahabaleshwar. Mahabaleshwar is supposedly in Maharashtra, but I am convinced (given the time it takes to get there) that it is actually somewhere in North India. Probably 20 kilometres above Nainital.
Although both places and ships had been invented, my father still decreed that we travel to Mahabaleshwar by tractor, although when we bought the vehicle the dealer convinced us it was a Fiat car, which in India went by the rather masculine name of… err... Padmini.
The journey started as all our journeys did, with my dad driving for the first 15 minutes, and then all of us staging a coup and replacing him with my mom at the wheel. Then the journey began in earnest.
Instead of picturesque Maharashtra, we were greeted by the sight of passers-by, both pedestrians and cyclists passing us by.
After hours of driving we realised we had only reached Worli. However, we were too far gone to turn back. My father promised us wild animals. Panther, black bear and, if we are really lucky, tiger. We instead got a squirrel, two pigeons and a Dutch bagpacker who was wearing only his shoes.
The climb up the ghats was relentless. It took us over four days. The winding road was so narrow that I thought we escaped death 84 times which is a lot even by Indian standards. Mahabaleshwar was forested in those days and it even had segments of a lake. The hotel, of course, had all the amenities which a seven-year-old needed. Power cuts, no running water and a drainage system which pre-dated Mohenjodaro. The hotel offered a whole lot of activities like carom and a... carom, that was it. So everyday for 15 days we played carom, then went to the lake, came back and played some more carom.
There was a psychological reason for people visiting the lake. One had to make sure the lake was still there, every single day.
All this would have still been bearable, except on the return journey my parents forgot me. They left without me. It took them over two hours to realise their — for lack of a better word and adequate proof — mistake. I was left weeping and bitter that the rest of my life was going to be one ceasless round of lake visits and carom, lake visits and carom, lake visits and carom.
Thus, I feel I still haven’t recovered from that first summer holiday. However, that is not a “get out of jail” fee card. One still has to go on a summer vacation. So happy Easter, and I hope you’ve booked.
 
Cyrus Broacha