My World of Food and Travel

There is a cheerful rabbit on the calendar on my office desk, standing up on its hind legs and prancing around with joy, a toothy grin plastered over its face. The caption says ‘Dream’. Overleaf, there is a delightful gang of pixies, riding iridescent snails. The caption – ‘Life’. I sighed and turned away my eyes from the calendar. An excel sheet lay open in my computer, splattered with various graphs and charts. “Hey, wake up, sleepyhead,” my colleague looked over at me through the cubicle partition. “Why are you staring at the calendar like that?” He peered at it closely. “Want to go on a holiday, do you?” “Yes,” I replied wearily. “A holiday every month, if you please.” “In that case, you have the wrong calendar,” he said, smiling warmly. He then carefully opened a brown envelope, took a calendar out of it and placed it on my desk. “Here,” he said in a low conspiratorial voice. “This is a magic calendar. Now you can go on your holiday for every month of the new year...

I am a person full of contradictions. So much so that sometimes even I am amazed at myself. I am that much organized with some things, mostly frivolous, as I am unorganized with other things, mostly very important ones. On one hand, I can’t proceed if I don’t have a system in place, and on the other hand, I keep on procrastinating till it is too late. Did you know I am a compulsive list-maker and that I have meticulously prepared a long list of pending things? It is another matter that I have not fulfilled any of them. What is the point of making a list if I don’t even bother to take it up, you may ask. Well, that’s how contradictory I am. Now you know. But if I had to tell you one thing I am good at, that would be my travel plans. I love to plan and research and dream before embarking on a trip. While the husband is more of ‘spur-of-the-moment’ and we-will-see-when-we-will-need-to-see types, I obsess about the predicaments we might find ourselves in if we don’t plan ahead. Recen...