I think illness is sometimes God's way of telling us all to slow down... a bit. Especially for those of us who are fresh into the world of work. That is, after spending all those years educating ourselves with so many things, most of which we tend to forget soon after, keeping only the useful bits for ourselves.

During our student days, most of us look forward to the time when we can start working. When we finally do begin, we cast sympathising glances every now and then at younger (or sometimes even older) relatives or friends or just that general class of studying folk. We then breathe deep sighs of relief, or sometimes pain, when we recall the trauma especially of examinations and other fruitless endeavours that only end up in making your handwriting worse than what it might have been in pre-school.

But at least these student days had that quality that can be described in the words: "after the darkness comes the dawn". Soon, the exams are a thing of the past and students are rewarded by holidays.

You might have fallen ill during the exams, but you generally tend to suppress any feelings of out-of-sortness, with a titanic resolve and an eye on the inevitable vacation to follow, be it winter, which has the promise of the yuletide spirit and the turn of the year, or the summer, which is absolute paradise on earth.

But the working man has no such reprieve. He works on and on, relentlessly, through sun, moon these days, and rain. He can suffer no break, and prays for such occasions as when a kindhearted relative or friend closes his nose and dives into marriage, or, when he just decides to pack up and head away somewhere - anywhere - with his family. But even at these times, he finds his mind almost inevitably heading to matters of work, or sometimes, if he takes his mobile with him, he even receives business calls from bosses or juniors who suddenly feel like eliciting his advice on all matters large and small.

Soon, he's back at work, and feels like he hasn't been away at all. But now, at least he's not torn between pleasing both colleagues and family. Then, when he's least expecting it, he falls ill. At first, he fights the feeling to stay back home, keeping an anxious eye on his leave situation and thinking he could manage to work, despite his body telling him strongly otherwise. But the illness is not going to leave him so easily. Soon, he makes the daring decision to stay back.

He's tentative at first, but slowly, as time passes, he crosses the danger mark, and begins to realise, "It's not all that tough after all." If it's a viral fever, he's even luckier. I say lucky because fever is generally not fatal and anyway I'm not talking about the fatal variety. The fever just brings a man back to his senses.

I mean, all along he's been working, shunning the blessing of leave just because he has been sucked into the vicious stream of the constant grind that offers little relief. It's like a constant twilight zone. Once a week, the moon shines through the clouds in the form of the weekend, and then it soon disappears behind the clouds again. In the case of a profession like mine - the media - where you're given only one day off from work every week, there is only so much moon and a dashed sight more of clouds.

Anyway, as I was saying, if it is viral fever that the worthy working man is experiencing, he'll find it has this peculiar teasing quality about it, whereby, it allows you to think you're improving by night, but the next morning you feel worse than ever before. So you decide to stay back home again. Gradually, it grows on you and you make the decision with a lot less trepidation than at first.

Soon, you don't want to get back to work. And the rest and relaxation you experience is unparallelled. Confined to bed for the most part, the only drawback is when you are forced to eat something gruelling like porridge or cornflakes by a very loving, well-intending mom, aunt or wife.