While growing up, vacations were something that we looked forward to but they came with a catch. Mother would give us a list of things to do during the entire holidays.
The frequency, the manner and the intensity with which we pursued these activities were left to us. Because we grew up in small towns, the bane of vacations — such as summer camps and holiday crash courses — were largely absent from our lives. Yes, we know how lucky we were.
There was only one rule we had to follow. It was that we would never whine about ‘being bored’. This is what that list was supposed to be about — the omnipresent answer to the dreaded question, ‘What can we do, we are bored?’ Now, on the other side of the fence, we realise that the question is scary. We are running out of things to provide, and ideas to keep our kids engaged.
At some point, there has been a constant hammering of hedonism in the young brains and when they are faced with a stretch of time that cannot be filled with any purpose, they don’t know how to handle it. I realised this when my daughter, bored out of her wits for five minutes, began ‘The Whine’ during her Christmas holidays.
Passing the afternoons on a hammock, staring at the foliage above or just sitting in the garden and plucking the grass without any purpose was a luxury, I realise. Now I barely have time to get a meal. Recalling how we munched on the countless sandwiches that mother provided us in our makeshift boats, homes or tents — made out of garden chairs and covered with bedsheets — is exhilarating today.
To sip the lemonade or milkshake, to swirl the drink around in the mouth, to just sit on the garden steps watching the dusk chase the day away, exhausted from the adventures of tree-climbing, butterfly-chasing or spinning fantastic, unbelievably impossible stories, were a luxury.
Many of us fell in love with reading, sketching, staring at space, music and making things, because we had the opportunity to get bored.
There is a privilege in boredom.
In it, there is proof of having time at hand, but more. Boredom shifts the focus of a person to look inwards — to draw from the self the rigours of entertainment.
If nothing else, boredom does expand our imagination.
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