ON SABBATICALS
A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri – November 2021
I recently concluded a
3-month break from work, my third of this century!
The
first was in October to December 2001, when I absconded to the UK (and, for
short stints, to Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and
Norway) on a British government scholarship to study leadership at the LSE. It
was a great time to travel – nobody else was doing so in the immediate
aftermath of 9/11, and most airlines had a ‘get bums on seats at any cost’
policy that enabled great deals for the remotely intrepid. I took my family on
a cruise (Newcastle to Amsterdam and back on ‘The Prince of Scandinavia’), I
walked through the glens outside Edinburgh, I even took a journey across the
Arctic Circle to Troms, all on my scholarship money. In fact, I remember only
one weekend spent in London, the highlight of which was a visit to Loftus Road
to watch a third division game between Queens Park Rangers and Oldham – football
tickets were way more expensive than travel in those days, with GBP 30 getting
you from London to Lisbon and back on British Airways but not a seat at an EPL
game in London, not even those in the outer stratospheres of stadiums from
where the players looked like ants.
The
second was in November and December 2006 and January 2007, when I moved to
Gujarat for a Visiting Fellow post at IRMA. The highlight of this was the
kindling of a love affair with knowledge – it led onwards to several academic
papers in different fields (power, participation, autonomy, aid effectiveness,
democratic decentralization, et al) and an attempt at full-time doctoral
education (I flunked out after three wonderful years alternating between the
library and the football ground).
The
third, August to October 2021, had no such structure or noble intent – I simply
needed a break (pretending to work without having anything to really do takes
its toll), I wanted to write a book (whose storyline has been churning inside
my head for years), and I wanted to take my annual trek, an activity that, for
me, makes life in a city livable (and I hadn’t done one since 2019, so this too
was bursting inside me).
I
also wanted time to think through my impending retirement.
So,
a quick report!
I
did two treks! The first was to Patalwan Lake in the Gurez Valley
in Kashmir, 5 days from roadhead to roadhead, reaching an altitude of 4,000
meters! This was a beautiful, easy-paced trek through empty alpine meadows
(and, I should mention, some less pleasant time spent clambering over rocks),
culminating at a stunning and large high-altitude lake. Gurez has been
described as the most beautiful part of Kashmir, but also not a good place to
visit because of its proximity to the LOC and its convenience as a place for
unwelcome foreign guests to cross over into India. My wife and elder child were
among the 25-person group that did the trek, and we also enjoyed the excellent
food (three hot meals a day, and wazwaan-style cooking when our camp cook
was in the mood), the interactions with an army patrol that was in our vicinity
through the trek, and the friendships we developed with our trek-mates and our
trek leaders (both really cool recently-retired military personnel).
We
returned to Srinagar and then decided on the spur of the moment to take an
additional week to explore Ladakh (the wife and child had never been). For me,
the highlight of this week was the Srinagar-Leh highway (I had travelled on
this road many times in the late 1990s – some things had changed, and some had
not) and the time spent in the Nubra Valley (my first time in the areas north
of the Indus and along the beautiful Shyok and Nubra rivers). The lows were
seeing the damage that a
successful film can do (in this case, ‘3 Idiots’ to Pangong Tso lake) and the
resemblance between Khardung La Pass and Lajpat Nagar market.
The second trek was to the Everest Base Camp in Nepal – it was long (12 days from Kathmandu to Kathmandu), high (reaching 5,600 meters at Mt. Kalapathar for those such as me who chose to make an extra effort for a wonderful view of Mt. Everest), and with long ups and downs, scary bridges, and some stretches of rocky terrain. But, beautiful scenery, few people (and, therefore, Indians welcome – thank you, pandemic), and mostly decent places to stay in with good food, electricity, and a selection of books to borrow. And, last but not least, this trek has serious show-off value upon return, especially in difficult forums such as one’s weekend football team. In case you are wondering, if an obese 58-year-old can do it, so can you (evidence is appended in the form of a photograph taken on 4th October 2021)!
The second photograph was taken on top of the Taklang La pass on the Leh-Manali road (altitude 5,327 meters) in August 1995, and is included as evidence that wisdom does not, as is commonly believed, increase with age. Same dumbass, 26 years, some inches and many kilograms apart! Pathetic!!
I also managed to complete a first draft of my
next novel, “A Walk Through the Wild Side”, which explores issues of ethnicity,
identity and insurgency in the North East of India around the late 1990s – and
expect sales to creep into double figures this time. Watch this space!!
What I did not do was think through retirement;
what will I do, where will I go, should I slow down or continue to work
somewhere, etc., at a time when my wife is working (the ‘kept man’ option is
particularly attractive), my children are out of the house (though not yet off
the payroll), and I like to think that I have almost enough money (nobody has quite
enough). The default option, of disappearing into my wife’s cottage outside
Dehradun and waking up every morning with nothing to do, no one to meet, and
nowhere to go, is an attractive one (but is it too early for that?). Should I
write for a living (as opposed to writing because I have something to say), and
how would a true Bong manage the business end that is necessary for a modicum
of success? Does somebody who is not ‘communications friendly’ (i.e., doesn’t
speak much, is not on social media, likes being in the background, and is
averse to networking) have something to offer in today’s, and tomorrow’s, post-truth
world?
Matters have been somewhat expedited by my
return to work, my welcome being akin to that of a refugee on the
Polish-Belarussian border (not a great surprise – the corporate sector has a
different attitude to 3-months-out compared with the media and development
sectors that I had been part of earlier), and I have committed to GTFO by early
2022. Don’t feel too bad for me – I had done everything that I had joined up to
do more than two years ago, and will not miss a job that I can do in my sleep,
an ‘all-fart-no-shit’ department, and a retromingent hierarchy.
So, suggestions on retirement options are
welcome!
Returning to sabbaticals – my experience with them
has been excellent, and I strongly recommend these as a means of taking oneself
away, recharging one’s batteries, and rethinking the fundamentals of one’s existence.
They work well if there is a structure or else a set of pre-set goals for the
time away, and a schedule for meeting these that keeps one genuinely busy. They
don’t if they are mistaken for holidays (or, alternatively, if work keeps
encroaching upon the time away), if they enable sleep in the daytime (or other
activities that are not normally done during office hours), or if one ends up
hanging around the house and getting in the way of its daily schedule. Getting
one’s family on board is a good idea. And, like with children, spacing them out
is advisable. Finally, a sabbatical should serve as a means to an end, one
whose value in bringing about change in the quality and direction of one’s life
is discernible only in hindsight, and not as an end in itself.
During my recent sabbatical, and as an antidote
to that feeling of sloth that develops whenever things can be postponed to
another day, I had the appended words greeting me at the dawn of every new day.
And that’s another thing that hasn’t changed with time (along with my great
wisdom, as described in the photographs above, and my love for football), they reminded
me back in my college days to focus on the road ahead, and they continue to do
so today.
‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep; but I
have promises to keep; and miles to go before I sleep; and miles to go before I
sleep.’ Robert Frost
