The other day my father asked me if I preferred work life to academic life. I said I preferred academic life. My father asked me why, probably expecting me to say that I loved scholastic pursuits, when I replied that it was because I didn't get summer holidays in my work life.

Ah! those glorious days of summer holidays. The thrill felt on the eve of the first official day of holiday laced with the relief of exams getting over. Two months of absolute bliss. All one had to do was stay loose and savour each day. Warm summer days spent hanging out with friends and cousins, reading books all day, mangoes, ice-cream... Even the end of the holidays was exciting. Summer holidays are about a very pleasant present and a new future with with no mistakes in it. One could look forward to going to new classes, new books, new teachers.

Once you start working, summer holidays are gone. Sure you are allowed a vacation every year. But it does not have the same birth-right quality of the summer holidays. Vacations at work have to be approved by bosses. Summer holidays are comfortingly dependable - same time every year. The work life vacation has to be fitted into your work schedule and it need not necessarily be in summer.

Summer holidays are seasons of leisure - no plans, no hurries, no worries. Work life vacations have to be planned and you tend to vacation like there's no tomorrow. More often than not you get back from a work life vacation needing another one to recover.

Summer holidays have a timelessness attached to them. Work life vacations, especially if you are recharging those batteries at home, are spent worrying that you are wasting time being idle, watching the clock and panicking that everyone else is clued in and getting ahead. This is probably because during a work life vacation only you are on a holiday. Guilt starts gnawing at you and you end up going back to the office before the vacation is officially over.

As I rue the loss of my summer holidays I get nostalgic and lose myself in the warm, fuzzy memories of days when all was right with the world and I didn't care if time stood still or passed me by.