The Welcome Break

You need a break from office!

Your clients can sense that when you start answering their questions with “that’s wonderful”. Your boss can too and so can most of your colleagues. Those who know you, that is. Those who don’t, shrug or raise an eyebrow like they always do. Being strange and being weird are the same things perhaps.

You have spent the better part of client due diligence meetings conducting deep research into the resort you would like to visit. And you didn’t forget to read the ‘family’ section of the reviews, of course. Your 4 year old son will accompany you. So will his mother.

You check in on the morning of D-day, looking appropriately tired from your back-breaking corporate job. Even the bell-boy notices. And you notice that he noticed.

The resort and the rooms, and yeah, the pool – they all look almost the way you saw them in the travel portal. Almost!

As soon as the bell-boy leaves after a hesitant wait for the tip you never gave, take a moment to plant your butt into the soft mattress of the gorgeous looking bed. Let it sink. Let the vacation sink in as well.

The beach is visible from your front sit-out, but that can wait till the evening. For now, you are excited to jump into the cool blue inviting pool, but the child needs feeding. The food your wife, the child’s mom brought, has turned useless so you sit down to place an elaborately instructed order and spend the next ten minutes arguing with the confused chef. Gosh, if you and your wife weren’t around, this child would never get raised!

Anyways, the food is here and you all are ready and set to go to the pool! Everyone’s excited, even you are!

The kid sees the baby pool and wants to jump in, food forgotten, mother ignored, dad assumed. You understand, you have to understand; the kid’s excited, he cannot be made to wait! You spend the next ten minutes in extreme happiness, tying up the various floaters onto your son, puffing air into the floating elephant your wife’s brought all the way from home. The beast inside the rubber grows iota by iota, as you pump your energy into it. You cannot wait to get your offspring into that and jump into the two feet deep baby pool!

It was irresponsible, even callous on your part to have ventured out into the adult pool when your son was still missing you playing the invisible dolphin carrying him on the waves around the baby pool. You gave in to the incomprehensible urge to swim under the wooden bridge that spans the adult pool. An urge your wife wouldn’t even nominate as an urge. And now your son wants to ride with you in the adult pool.

Yeah, you heard it right!

You look at your wife, and she looks back with those surprised eyes that say, “he wants to”. You look at your son, and he looks back with a face that says, “I waaaant to…….”!

You sigh once, while your face is turned away and then swim towards your son with a laugh.

At last the mother and the child have gathered at the edge of the pool, the towel being violently rubbed all over him. You get ready for a nice long swim, of course charting the course of your voyage right under the wooden bridge. The couple near you get frisky. The young girl jumps into the arms of the middle-aged man, half bald, as he clasps her tightly and … did they kiss? You couldn’t make that out. You weren’t supposed to be looking that hard anyways. Wait, you don’t have tight underwear on. Better move.

And as you prepare to dive, your wife calls, “honey, he wants you to fetch him some fries.”

You holler, “order them and the waiter will get them.”

She hollers back, “they are not serving to kids next to the pool.”

You look at the water, avoid looking again at the still entwined couple, and trudge back, wet and dripping. You refuse to don the towel, you refuse to dry yourself. Not yet! Your vacation awaits!

The fries disappear slowly, agonizingly into your son’s mouth. The water stays blue and inviting; the frisky couple exhaust their fascination with water play and start drying each other; the white European in the poolside lounger nearby has turned his substantial belly towards the sun and the sun meanwhile has moved just enough to touch the leaves of the palm tree at the end of the pool.

The fries get over and you stand up, eagerly taking off your towel and shuffling out of your slippers. “Papa, I’ve to do potty!”

You look up disbelievingly. “Didn’t you go in the morning?” you ask.

“No, he did not honey.” Your wife responds. A hushed battle ensues and you manage to convince her to take him to the ladies washroom. It helps that gents loos are universally dirtier than corresponding ladies ones and resorts are no exception.

You finally reach the edge of the pool even before mother and son have moved five paces. You clasp your hands and take a plunge, cool smooth, refreshing water engulfing your sweaty body. You surface back up and aim for the foot bridge. It begs to be swum under. It was made to do just that. And you spend the next ten minutes swimming back and forth under the bridge, face down once, back-strokes next and so on.

A dancing figure rears up in your peripheral vision and you clean your eyes to see your wife standing near the bridge and waving.

“He wishes to go to the beach. Come.” You nearly sink, hands placid, legs still, face blank and mouth open. Water enters and you go into a violent spitting and coughing spree. The life guard prepares to jump in when suddenly you find your feet and gesture him to stop.

You manage to walk back to the stairs, avoiding the immense ignominy of being rescued by a lifeguard from a tranquil pool inside a laid back resort!

As you walk back from the pool all dried up and dressed, you notice the frisky couple have slunk away, most probably to their room. Exhausted, certainly. They’d probably rest now. Probably!

You reach your room and get ready for the beach.

At the beach, you dump everything on a hotel towel and decide to move onto the thin watery layer between the sea and the dry sand. You love to walk on that (when you’re not raucously jumping inside the sea itself) and to feel your feet sink in the soft wet sand. You call your son and wife. She shouts back, “He is not very keen on the water, he doesn’t like it anymore.” She is a bit apologetic.

“Then what does he want to do on the beach?” You are finally starting to lose it.

“He wants to play with the sand”, and she points to the sand digging toys placed inside the fluorescent green bucket with the yellow handle. Your eyes move on from the bucket and strike your son’s face, all expectant and eyes blinking, sitting right next to the bucket. Another long sigh bids you goodbye.

You walk back even as your peripheral vision catches sight of a young couple (the girl was particularly nice) racing away on a quad bike, her hair flying behind them as she sat hugging the man tightly. As the monstrous vehicle recedes, you are left with some combustible diesel fumes for company.

The next day you plan to change the plan. That works sometimes!

You announce that the family will be hiring a bike and spend the day exploring the roads and forts and eateries of Goa. The family is excited.

After you spend the next one hour scouting for agents to rent a bike, and selecting a suitable machine, you finally ride it back to your resort and wave to your family frolicking near the reception.

They pile on to the bike. The kid likes to sit sandwiched between the two of you and doesn’t like to be too snug. He has to be able to see both ways, to lean out, and he also has to sit with legs up under his chin. You slide forward on the hot leather seat, centimeter by centimeter, until you hang onto it just by the trailing edge of your very stretched and sore bum cheeks. You realize this is not going to be too much fun after ten minutes. You try to recall if there were any speed breakers or bumps along the roads.

While you managed to survive on the roads for nearly half an hour, stopping frequently on the pretext of ‘wow’ views, but really just comforting your butt, the descending road downhill does you in totally. The weight of your family is pressing down on you as you press your trailing bum skin harder and harder to retain your grip in the driver’s seat!

With such and other similarly enjoyable and memorable events, the vacation comes to an end.

You nearly limp back out of the office elevator onto your floor (it felt more like you stumbled out like a sack of speedpost), but of course you try to hide the limp. Your shoulders and shins are sore and painful. And you don’t even want to focus on the trailing edge of your bum. Your head feels double its usual weight and your neck has to do a lot more to control and keep the floppy head in place. It must be all the new happy memories sloshing around inside your brain.

As you meander through the aisle to try and get to your cubicle unnoticed, a heavy whack lands on your sore shoulder! You cringe, curse and then immediately drag a smile across your face. It’s your colleague, appraising you with mock appreciation and bobbing his head up and down, a Cheshire cat grin on his face.

“So, bro? Back from your vacation eh? Looks like you had fun man?!”

You nod, smile forced even wider. “Tell me about that? Absolute relaxer …” and you trail off. 

Your boss rears up his head, eyes razor sharp, and beckons you to some very important business. There is tons of work and you are one well-rested stallion he’s got.