Do you know what’s better than a weekend? What’s better than a holiday for a festival? Better than holidays at the end of school term?
HOLIDAYS FOR NO REASON.
Well, they aren’t for NO reason, but they’re holidays for reasons I don’t understand.
Like today, we got the day off for a bandh . A bandh , the internet says is ‘a general strike’. I hate it when I have to look up meanings of words to understand the meanings of words. But I had to look up what a strike was. It’s ‘a refusal to work organised by a body of employees as a form of protest, in an attempt to gain a concession from their employer’. Sigh! I had to look up what concession meant after that. I won’t bore you with more words and meanings, I’m pretty sure you have enough of that in your weekly dictation tests.
Anyway, a bandh is (to put it simply) when someone wants something, and to make sure they get it, they refuse to do anything. They stop working. Is it just me, or is being an adult awesome? If I want something, then I have to work triple hard to get it! Extra 30 minutes screen time? Clean your room. Sleepover at a friend’s house? 100 mental math sums. Ice cream treat after dinner? Help do the dishes.
But adults? If they want something, apparently they can say ‘Hey, I want this and I won’t do anything I’m meant to until you give it to me!’ And people fall for it!
So, on a bandh , shops shut, there are no buses and offices and schools have to close down too! Which is why I got the day off today. I’m not complaining. There were pancakes for breakfast. We weren’t forced to have a bath. The latest book in a series I’m reading arrived in the morning, so I got to lie in bed and read it. Bliss all around!
Cataclysm
And then, disaster struck! P Ma’am, emailed the parents and told them to sign up for a ‘fun online math challenge’. I don’t know how anyone can put the words fun, math and challenge together in a sentence and think that’s ok. Or fun.
Well, I got signed up for it straight away and had to do three worksheets. After I trudged my way through that torture, things got worse...and worse. Someone reminded my mother on Whatsapp that there’s a Hindi quiz tomorrow, and that the research for our English paper was due too.
Holiday, what holiday? I’d rather have gone to school. It’s easier to sit in the last row and hide than it is to sit at the dining table and pretend like you don’t exist.
And do you know what the rotten cherry was on this bitter cake? I have to make up the holiday by going to school on Saturday! SATURDAY! There should be laws protecting children from this kind of thing. How about a bandh to get that actioned? Anyone?
