No, we are not talking about that funny, uncertain, feeling you get after you have drenched the boss and his wife with indelible ink of a festive bast Nor are we referring to that dysfunctional air that seems to surround your vision after an all-night prayer meeting by whatever name you might call it. (You don’t get it? Holi, dummy as in that north Indian festival of colour. And Holy in “Holy Smokes” and other variations of the saintly theme. You still don’t understand? Forget it. We used that title to hook you and now that you have taken the bait we will keep it simple).

Have you ever checked in to a hotel in a strange city, pulled out the schedule of the things that you intend to do that day, only to be told by the Desk.

“So sorry. Today’s a holiday. All the shops and offices will be closed.”

“Closed? But why, for Heaven’s sake?”

“Because it’s the birthday of that great Stone Age Freedom Fighter Gung Ho.”

“Really! And who did Gung Ho fight?”

“The Dreadful Dinosaur's of Bhootpradesh. Gung Ho was a great ancestor of our honourable chief minister. Everything, but everything, is closed.”

So there go all your plans, and meetings, and conferences and your working lunch and business dinner. Also that carefully structured budget. And if it frustrates us and you, born-in-India-Indians though we proudly are, you can imagine what it does to a firang keen on tapping the vast, and legendary, middle class market in our land. Can you blame him if, the next time he meets his business associates in Firangistan, he says, “Don’t do business with India, everyone there is in a 365 day holiday mode, every year.”

We know of no nation, anywhere in the world, that has more holidays than we do. And, thanks to the pressures of coalitation politics in most state and the Centre, that bizarre list is growing.

So what can we, as hard-working travel people do about? Well, the one thing we can’t do is to expect the government to stop announcing holidays. Not with elections around the corner. We can, however make life easier for our clients, in four easy steps.

Be Aware
Make someone in your organisation responsible for maintaining an updated list of all holidays, the reason for each holiday, and who will it affect: government offices, banks, private organisations, transportation. Some holidays are observed by government servants only, others like bandhs could shut everything down. Some holidays are announced at the beginning of the year, others are dependent on the sighting of the moon, still others erupt at short notice. It isn’t difficult to keep abreast of holiday developments because the very nature of a holiday demands that as many people as possible know about it. But you need to make one person responsible for updating such information.

Communicate
The updated information about holidays must be communicated to everyone in the office. It should be on every computer or, if you prefer more traditional methods, revised holiday lists should be on every desk as soon as they are updated. When a harassed client rings any phone in the office and asks, “Is tomorrow a holiday?” he does not want to hear “I do not know. Maybe, Perhaps I am not sure...”

Pre-empt
Don’t wait for the client to ask you, pre-empt his or her question. Tell them just as soon as you know. If you are a hotelier, flash it on the room TV. If you don’t have that facility, display a ‘Holidays of the Month’ information sheet in every room and in the reception. Make sure that this information is updated within two hours of your holiday monitor becoming aware of a new holiday.

Reach Out
Very often, a tour itinerary has been sent to us without mentioning the holidays that intervene. A visit to a museum has been scheduled and, when we have arrived there, we find that it’s closed because of its weekly holiday. There seems to be an increasing tendency among agencies and operators to dump the planning of itineraries on the least experienced person in the office. We have begun to feel that, one the client has been hooked for the tour, the accommodation and transportation booked and the commissions assured, further details don’t really matter to senior executives in the organisation. But they do: they matter a lot. Those two clients who go engaged because the low man on your totem pole, did not warn them about the intervening holidays, they might tip the balance between you getting a major series, and your rival snatching them away from under your nose. Never, never, underestimate the ripple effect of an angry client.

And never, never, underestimate the potential danger of an unexpected holiday.