it’s seven pm and all i can think about is: where are my holidays??? today sheelu and me sat and fixed the schedule for teachers during dusshera holidays. school is closed for one week, and every teacher gets three days holidays, on the other days we have to do some renovations, filing work, planning, trainings and so on. a lot of work has to be neglected while school is open, so we feel we have to utilize holidays as much as we can.
therefore, my holidays are canceled and i’ll stay in hostel and work. although i feel like i desperately need some time for me alone, i know that i’ll regret it if i really take them when the holidays are over. the amount of work is overwhelming and if we don’t do it, it’ll be not done and in the end the children will suffer. it always seems like being forced to make a decision: for privacy and against children, or for children and against privacy. and if i escape and take a day or afternoon off, the next day reminds me with a bigger amount of work that taking rest gets punished after all.
not that we never do recreational things with children…we take them for festivals (ramlila), some sundays i just take four or five and we roam around in the city, we play lego, just hang out toegther and talk… this is always great for me and i need these times when i am not working, but just together playing and talking with the children. in hostel, the best day of the week is sunday. in the morning, we wake up late, maybe 7 or 7.30 am and before getting up we’ll just lay around, cuddle up and watch some children wrestle, have cushion fights (very dangerous, because the cushions here are so hard). with 15 girls in a 15 m2 room inevitably there is also a little crying sunday morning – jyoti fell on barkha and she fell on anita and anita got hurt because she fell on the brick that is holding the door in its place…well, you can imagine. then we have breakfast and children start taking a shower outside or inside, i clean my room, some children are always present, playing, complaining, talking, asking, shouting … for lunch we have chicken in sauce with rice and salat, my week’s favourite and many times the children cook on their own. after lunch, we rest and then i start preparing classes for monday…
how could i miss these wonderful sundays? sadly, sunday is my only free day in the week, so that leaves me with a great dilemma. but anyway, everything we do here always seems to some kind of a compromise.
what i miss most is the absence of talking. i have to talk all day, in school, in shops, in hostel, i can only be silent when working on the computer or eating – and still then, always somebody comes and wants something and i have to talk. i miss being silent, i have so many things to think about and so many stories spinning around in my mind and no time to write them down. writing is so different from talking and although i am very tired now and my eyes are starting to close by themselves, i don’t feel like leaving the internet-cafe, because i know that in hostel 30 children are waiting… and they are going to TALK 
well, i wouldn’t mind if i wouldn’t be required to answer, i guess … sometimes i’m just exhausted. but tomorrow is sunday… and next week no teaching, so i’ll be able to work silently in school. just another kind of holidays.
