Column

For the past one week, everyone’s been talking of going away. On Facebook, friends share their holiday plans. At parties, people talk of air tickets and hotel bookings.

Total strangers disclose what they plan to do in Goa/Colombo/Phuket as they chatter into their mobile phones in beauty salons. Emails land in the inbox wishing me the best for 2010 and informing that offices will be shut until the new year. It seems that it’s just going to be me and some BBMP staff left back in Bangalore while everyone else vacations.

Which, in its own way, isn’t a bad prospect to look forward to. For one, battling traffic will not be a nightmare. I can plan my appointments to the second. Under normal circumstances, I am either so early that I embarrass the hosts or so late that I annoy them.
For another, I can do all the things I have been promising myself as a treat. Chief amongst these is a day spent sniffing around the perfume counters of department stores. My relationship with these stores is purely need-based. I rush in, buy whatever I need and rush out. There is never any time to dawdle; to sniff and stare.

And finally, I will have the time to spruce up the house and garden. For years I turned a blind eye to the stray cobweb or the line of dust on the windowsill. But as I began to agonise over a word as part of my writing, it affected a personality change. My family have a name for it that isn’t very polite. Psychiatrists call it OCD.

Whatever it may be named, the fact remains that I can wake up these days stricken by the thought of grime on the upper side of the ceiling fan or the patina of dust on home plants. To be able to get at it would fill me with a supreme satisfaction. The world may sun itself on a beach or party the night away, but I shall sit beneath my fig tree and watch the grass grow. This will be my season for repose and quiet. Happy Holidays people!

—Anita Nair’s new novel will be published in January 2010