I returned from Uttarakhand when the Char Dham yatra season was coming to an end. The vibe there was of a home that has just bid farewell to its guests after a grand wedding and is now looking forward to some rest. Some people were going to lower altitudes for the winter, others were returning home—but everyone was ready for a much-needed rest.
Back home, newspapers were advertising the winter itineraries in Uttarakhand. This would mean more revenue and livelihood generation for the people and the state, but I wondered if those tired people really wanted this. Yes, many of them would readily take up the new opportunity. But what about their rest after long, back-breaking months of handling the peak tourist rush?
It made me think about the vanishing concept of rest from our thought process and, for that, my generation needs to take the blame. Decades ago, as young professionals, we spoiled both our bosses and our customers by working round the clock. Some of them continue to advocate long hours. For the corporate world, working long hours is something that families and societies have accepted as a way of life.
In our childhood, we all had a holiday on Sunday and when the five-days-a-week culture came in, it brought cheer to all those chafing at the weekly toil. But by the time I was in the workforce, the work hours started quietly creeping into personal time.
Television and radio stations, too, used to take a break at midnight and there was nothing like today’s always-on content. This made all of us, those in front of screens and those behind, take rest by design. Our collective rest cycles followed our natural rhythm in sync with nature.
Think about it—rest is not something you can have in isolation; it is more like a community activity. If barbers used to take an off on, say, Tuesday, it ensured that each of them rested that day and no business was lost on account of someone working an extra day. Customers adjust and probably subconsciously appreciate that there is one fixed day when you cannot go for a haircut and plan other things. Resting as a community assured everyone associated with your trade can take rest that day. Even if a small percentage of people chose to stay open, a whole ecosystem would need to stay open.
The final attack on our rest time came from the 24x7 work-and-play culture. The nightlife that we have embraced disturbs so many natural rhythms. To understand this, we need to look beyond numbers like revenue generated and GDP. You need to choose a lens that looks at life as it should be lived and enjoyed.
Traditional wisdom always told us—now backed by modern research—rest is as important as action. Many diseases, especially lifestyle diseases, are taken care of if we allow the body to rest and heal itself. We need to rest every night, preferably at around the same time as most of those around us. But we also need to rest to relax and rejuvenate our minds. For all of us to be able to rest, we all need to agree on some time windows so that there are bare minimum requirements from others, bringing everyone and everything to rest.
As of now, there are only three national holidays on the calendar when everyone gets an off. On those days too, we hardly rest as we get busy organising and participating in celebrations. Every long weekend we try to escape the city we live in, to crowd the place we are visiting, mostly stuck in traffic and spending a large chunk of our ‘time off’ in vehicles. Have we forgotten the art of taking rest? Can we bring it back in our dinacharya, the daily routine, and ritucharya, the seasonal routine?
Older Indian calendars had rest built in—seasonally, culturally and socially for all beings. Travel was restricted during the four monsoon months, when, metaphorically, the gods are supposed to sleep. Wandering sages and globetrotting businessmen stayed at one place and most others stayed home. This allowed not just humans to rest, but it allowed nature to rejuvenate without interruptions and influences. Rivers flow in their full might, allowing aquatic life to own its space and reproduce. People had time to think about the purpose of life and re-align their actions with their personal and social goals while spending time with families and neighbours. What made this possible was that everyone rested at the same time.
Is it time that we insert rest by design in our lives once again? Among the things we will need to let go is the culture of operating 24x7. Can we enforce rest days for all kinds of businesses and public services? Can devices be designed to go on a sleep more for a specified number of hours every day, like some gadgets and apps offer? Can late-night food deliveries be paused? While our parliamentarians debate the latest version of the Right to Disconnect Bill—which proposes to enshrine the right to ignore work-related communications outside of official working hours—we can proactively do it for our own lives and ecosystems.
Ashtanga Hridayam, an ancient book on Ayurveda, tells us that good sleep is one of the three pillars for ensuring good quality of life, along with good food and restrained behaviour. So, let rest be our collective new year’s resolution.
Read all columns by Anuradha Goyal
Author and founder of IndiTales
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(Views are personal)