Education experts ask the question every year: do children really need such long summer holidays? Apparently, such a long break interrupts their development and hinders their learning process. But perhaps educators aren't really aware of what all kids do during the holidays these days. A myriad of courses, classes, camps and workshops involving swimming, art, personality development, music, programming (a few years ago it was just general computer studies) and the like have given rise to a sort of new seasonal industry. Even travel in the name of vacation seems loaded with exotic destinations and personalized experiences packed into a short period of time. We can 'do' Europe in ten days and Australia in a week, and return with packed suitcases and digital memories already shared in real time, and commented on. Holidays are no longer, in a certain sense, a break but an intensified search for experiences that are not normally encountered in everyday life. It's a far cry from the summer vacations we experienced growing up. In India, summer vacation every year meant one thing and one thing only: We would return to our “native place,” connect with the emotional headquarters of our extended family, and spend two months with a group of uncles, aunts, and “first and first child ". second cousins. The happiest childhood memories of an entire generation of Indians seem to center around this annual ritual of homecoming and affirmation. We tacitly apologized for the separation involved in being individuals even as we rushed back into the cauldron of community and continuity that is family. Summer holidays were a sticky time of unity, as who we were and what we owned oozed from our indi...... middle of paper ......there's just one big difference in the holiday experience - the place, the duration, the people or even the memories. But the purpose of the holiday has also undergone a dramatic change. Today, even a short trip to the beach requires sustained effort on our part, so that work life doesn't impact our "me time." We put our cell phones on silent, make sure the auto-responder is set to automatic, and try not to check other people's vacation photos on Facebook, but it only takes a little more than a week and we start to twitch. We seem to be too entrenched in the main affairs of our lives for a disruption that outstays its welcome. In any case, going on holiday for too long becomes tiring. There is a constant nagging feeling that we might be missing something important and urgent. The irony of fate is that a normal working day, on the contrary, seems much more relaxing.