I don’t remember when rest stopped being neutral.
There was no announcement. No moment of realisation. It didn’t turn hostile overnight.
It just slowly acquired weight.
At some point, rest stopped being empty space and started feeling like time with expectations attached. It began to ask questions I didn’t know how to answer.
I’m 24, turning 25 this year. I graduated, spent three years preparing for UPSC, stepped away from it, and now sit in classrooms at the Law Faculty, Delhi University, learning a different grammar of ambition.
On paper, things look settled. A direction regained. A path resumed.
Internally, something still hesitates.
Earlier, rest simply happened. It slipped into the day unnoticed. Long evenings with friends where nothing particular occurred. Chai breaks that stretched without intent. Afternoons wasted without guilt or accounting.
Nobody asked what it led to. Nobody asked who it helped me become.
Rest didn’t need to be defended. Stillness didn’t have consequences.
Now, every pause feels examined.
If I sit idle, my mind quietly asks: Is this allowed? If I take a break, it wants to know: For how long? If I do nothing, it feels like I’m skipping an invisible responsibility, failing an unspoken test.
Rest no longer feels like recovery. It feels like something I need to qualify for.
The three years of UPSC preparation rearranged my relationship with time in ways I didn’t anticipate. Without realising it, I learned to live under constant internal surveillance. Hours were no longer containers, they were resources.
You don’t just study; you optimise. You don’t just rest; you recalibrate. You don’t pause; you prepare to resume.
Even exhaustion had to prove its legitimacy.
And slowly, this logic leaked everywhere.
Even friendships weren’t immune.
You met people between targets. You spoke while walking. Conversations had edges because time was always present, always impatient, waiting nearby like someone checking their watch.
At the time, this compression felt temporary. Necessary. A sacrifice made knowingly. I told myself this was a phase, that once life opened up again, I would soften with it.
But habits don’t dissolve just because circumstances change.
Now, at the Law Faculty, life has opened up. The syllabus is manageable. The days aren’t packed to suffocation. The campus is familiar. The chai tastes the same. The tapris still hold space without asking questions.
What’s different is who stands there.
Many of my classmates are 20 or 21. They’ve arrived fresh from undergrad, still fluent in a language I once spoke effortlessly. They sit on the stairs between lectures without checking the time. They skip classes without guilt. They rest without turning it into a negotiation with themselves.
They talk about the present as if it’s allowed to exist on its own, not merely as a bridge to something else.
I notice this most when we’re all sitting together, outside class, between lectures, over chai. Their bodies are relaxed in a way that isn’t strategic. Their pauses don’t carry explanations. Their laughter doesn’t feel scheduled between responsibilities.
They chill, without calling it anything else.
And I sit there with them, participating, smiling, present, but slightly misaligned. As if I’ve arrived from a different timezone where time behaves more strictly.
Its not envy I feel. It’s recognition.
I remember being like that.
There was a time when friendships were built on shared confusion. Nobody knew where they were headed, so nobody felt late. Rest wasn’t something you chose, it was the default setting. Time felt wide, forgiving, expansive enough to hold indecision.
Now, friendships are shaped by direction. Conversations arrive with subtext, what someone’s preparing for, what they’re aiming at next, how long they can stay before they need to move on. Even when we rest, we do it provisionally.
Law Faculty didn’t cause this shift. It simply revealed it to me.
Because alongside these younger students are people like me, older by a few years, heavier by experience, carrying invisible calendars in our heads. We enjoy the moment, but we audit it quietly. We rest with one eye open.
And then there are old friends.
People I once spent entire evenings with, doing nothing of consequence. We didn’t fight. We didn’t drift apart dramatically. We simply became less essential to each other’s present. Conversations thinned. Check-ins became occasional. Rest stopped being shared.
Not because affection disappeared. But because life became specific.
That’s the strangest part.
I don’t miss particular people as much as I miss the effortlessness of togetherness. I miss when rest was communal, when sitting in silence didn’t feel like wasted potential, when nobody was in a hurry to justify why they were still there.
Now, even when I’m with friends, rest feels individual. Fragmented. Time-bound.
The unspoken rule seems to be: enjoy yourself, but briefly.
Age works quietly in the background too. At 24, turning 25, rest is no longer read as innocence. It’s read as delay. Especially when you’ve already stepped off the expected timeline once.
So when I rest, I don’t just rest.
I measure. I compare. I justify.
I explain my pauses even when no one asks.
“I was tired.” “I needed a break.” “I’ve been consistent otherwise.”
As if rest needs references to exist.
The irony is that this version of rest doesn’t restore much. It calms the body, but the mind stays alert. You’re still, but not settled. Paused, but not at peace.
No sadness. Not even regret.
It’s the quiet fatigue of always accounting for yourself.
Sometimes, sitting among younger classmates, watching how easily they inhabit their time, I’m reminded of a version of myself that didn’t constantly audit the present for future consequences. A version that believed pauses were infinite.
That version hasn’t disappeared.
He just doesn’t run the show anymore.
I’m trying, slowly, to let rest return to being unproductive. Not strategically. Not efficiently. Just honestly.
Some days I succeed. Most days, I don’t.
But occasionally, when I sit still long enough, with friends, or alone, and resist the urge to justify the pause, something loosens. The day feels less pointed. Time softens around the edges.
For a moment, rest feels like rest again.
Not a reward. Not preparation. Not a failure.
Just a pause that doesn’t ask for answers.
A pause where I don’t have to prove that I’m trying hard enough. Where I don’t have to explain the gaps in my timeline. Where time doesn’t lean in, waiting to be used.
In those moments, I feel close to a version of myself I thought I had outgrown, not younger, just gentler. Someone who believed that being present was enough. Someone who didn’t confuse stillness with stagnation.
That version doesn’t ask me where I’m headed. He doesn’t ask how long this will last. He just sits beside me, quietly, reminding me that life once moved slowly enough to be held.
The moment never stays.
It never does.
Time tightens again. The questions return. The ledger opens. The pause collapses back into motion.
But now I know this, rest wasn’t lost. It was buried under expectation. And sometimes, briefly, imperfectly, I manage to unearth it.
And maybe that’s all I can ask for right now.
Not to live there forever. Not to reclaim who I was.
Just to remember, in flashes, in pauses, in unguarded moments, that rest was once allowed to exist without consequence.
And that somewhere beneath the urgency, beneath the accounting, beneath the constant becoming, that permission is still waiting for me.
Quiet. Patient. Unproductive.
And still, somehow, enough..