Copyright vogue
Once upon a time, weekends were for life. For discovering a new park to host a make-believe badminton tournament, cinema halls that smelt faintly of caramel and for that one friend who could make you laugh until your stomach ached. Now, we count down to the duvet cocoon, phone balanced on chest, snacks within reach and the comforting illusion of rest we like to call bed rotting. It's hard to pinpoint the exact time my weekends started looking like a fan whirring above the soft static of Instagram Reels and the faint sound of pressure cooker whistles from someone else’s Sunday lunch. It’s a tableau of modern rest that leaves you more foggy than free. When the week feels like too much, this feels like control. But by Sunday night, I feel oddly hollow instead of refreshed; that’s the catch. “When stress and anxiety rise, our tolerance for stimulation drops,” says Renuka Gandhi, clinical psychologist and counsellor. “We start choosing isolation, even when what we really need is interaction. It’s a protective reflex that can sneakily make us lonelier.” The reality is that bed rotting has become synonymous with self-preservation, especially for young Indians constantly toggling between 10-hour workdays and family obligations that don’t recognise weekends. The city doesn’t slow down. You can still hear the honks, the neighbours fighting over parking and the never-ending construction. So we retreat to the one space we can control: our bed. While suffering through a particularly bad case of lethargy one weekend, I found myself trying to think back to what weekends used to feel like before burnout flattened them into two blurry naps. It was driving an hour outside the city or sweating through an early-morning trek because someone promised me a sunrise. For Airaa Sethi, a Pune-based brand manager who admits she spent most weekends “scrolling horizontally,” the shift came after a health scare. “I started saying yes to small things again. Breakfasts, morning walks, even grocery runs. I thought I was tired, but really, I was just bored of doing nothing.” This isn't about adding productivity hacks to your to-do list. We’re still all about rest, just the kind that doesn’t always look still. Sometimes rest looks like a stretching session, the smell of filter coffee drifting through your mother's kitchen or the sound of rain while you read by the window. Just a moment when you remember there’s more to you than the person who answers work emails in fifty shades of formal. The cure for bed rotting is good old curiosity. Step out. Wander through a neighbourhood you’ve never explored. Try that heritage walk or art class you keep scrolling past. Take a short road trip with no agenda except to stop when you feel like it. Go rock climbing, paddleboarding, pottery-making or just lie under an unfamiliar sky. Wake up one hour earlier and sit with your coffee somewhere that isn’t your bed. Do something that will prevent your weekend from feeling like it evaporated before you even got a sniff of it. True rest comes from engaging your senses, not numbing them. You don’t have to fill every minute, but you do have to live in a few of them. So instead of mourning all the versions of yourself you don’t make time to be on the weekend, try meeting one of them halfway. They’ve probably been waiting for you outside. Eldest daughter syndrome is affecting more than your mind I tried fixing my sleep cycle for four months—here's what worked for me I swapped playlists for pink noise. My mind has never been clearer
