The irony of my holiday

I am on leave this week.

The official excuse is that I have leaves left to consume. That is all it is – an excuse. Because before today, I never really made an effort to consume all the leaves I had in a year. Moreover, I never really did use all of them up.

For 8 years, Mola kept requesting that I take leave. Stay at home. That the two of us spend time together doing nothing.

I never did.

Something “important” kept coming up – an important meeting, some last minute crisis, a large pitch.

Something completely meaningless.

And today, because of Mola, I have managed to take the week off.

From the time she passed away, I never really took time off from work. I worked continuously, even when the rest of the world went on leave, in December.

Somewhere in the middle of February, I started feeling drained, tired. I used to be breathless.

Just working, without coming back home to her started taking a toll on me.

So she is really the reason why I am on leave.

Doing nothing. Like she wanted me to.

But the idea of “doing nothing” was being with her.

And she is not around.

Arjun is coming here. It won’t be as morose as I make it out to be. I might even enjoy the week, a lot.

Nevertheless, when Mola was around, I never took leave. She kept asking me to. And today, I am on leave because of her.

That is the irony of my holiday.

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