Yup, it’s officially May now. Which means GloPoWriMo has come to an end, and you will no longer be subject to an infrequent post list which ends up with you getting around 8 notifications when I post 4 days worth of content.
You’re blessed. You’re welcome.
Today is labour day, and I woke up in the morning forgetting the rest of the country would be on holiday. Hence a few texts were sent in the morning wondering whether people had left for home, and wondering if I should call to wake them up: in the event they overslept and missed their alarm. I’m glad I didn’t. In the evening, however, I discovered that today wasn’t a holiday in the United States of America. At first, I thought it was a natural consequence of capitalism: why celebrate your labourers at all. It seemed fairly plausible that America had taken this to the extreme. A quick Google search revealed they celebrated labour day in September, on the first Monday.
This led to me thinking two things.
First, different countries shouldn’t be allowed to celebrate the same thing on different days. It’s so weird. This happened to me this year, because it was Mothers’ Day in the UAE when I was there (March), and I refused to gift my mum, telling her I’d wish her when it was Mothers’ Day in India (May). But imagine you’re a globetrotter. The number of times you’d celebrate the same holiday is incredulous to me. Also, standardizing the holiday around the world will allow for a more wholesome celebration, in my head – because you can compare the different ways in which each tradition celebrates the same day.
Second, America got this one right. See, we celebrate this on May 1st, a date. And in India, we have a lot of “date” holidays. As a consequence of this, we don’t get some holidays – because they’ll fall on a Saturday or a Sunday. Which means inevitably we lose one holiday in the year. We should switch to “day” based holidays. First Monday of September. Second Monday of June. Tejas’ birthday must always be a working day and celebrated as Tejas Jayanti. Just throwing these ideas out there.
Anyway, off to study Labour Law now. It’s hilarious that I’m studying Labour in Gujarat on Labour Day and Gujarat Day. I’ve made this joke several times over the last 24 hours and it gets me every time. The subject’s very whatever. Can’t wait to be done, and get 1/3rd the way through exams. Closer to the end of fourth year with each passing day.
Tejas Rao 