Dear readers, last week, on Friday to be precise, I woke up in the morning and looked at my calendar. And lo and behold, I realised that I had only two work meetings to attend throughout the day.

In that instant, a tremendous feeling of joy passed through my body and mind. It was almost a childish feeling of delight. As if it was the first day of school vacation and your father had just announced that he has booked a tempo traveller and the entire extended family is going somewhere on holiday.

And then I looked at my calendar more closely. It turned out that my meetings were at 10 a.m. and 1.30 p.mImmediately, that childish feeling of delight dissipated. As if it was the first day of school vacation and your father had just announced that he has booked a tempo traveller and the entire extended family is going on holiday to Kodaikanal for the 55th time in the last six months.

Friends, please explain to me why our parents were obsessed with either Kodaikanal or Mysuru. Perhaps we shall discuss this in another column.

Back to my feeling of consternation. Why was I so disappointed? Let me explain. According to this writer, there are only two ideal ways in which to schedule meetings in your working day. Either you organise them all at once, one after the other, with no more than 15 minutes between them. Or you have none at all.

The most pitiful arrangement of meetings is when you have just two or three, all spaced out by one or two hours in between.

Why? This is because the meetings are neither far apart enough to allow you to do some actual work — such as writing a globally renowned fortnightly column for a major Indian newspaper; nor are they close enough for you to just sit at your desk and tick them off one after the other.

Instead, I now have to figure out what to do in the awkward gap between these meetings. Is it long enough to, for instance, read a book, cook a nice lunch, do some laundry, file your taxes or argue with people on the Internet? Maybe. But only if you do this quickly. Otherwise, you will end up running from the kitchen to your computer because you under-soaked the horse gram and now the pressure cooker needs an extra whistle.

But is it short enough to just sit at your computer and do random amusements? Also no.

At this point, you are probably thinking: “Aha! Sidin! I know what you are about to suggest! You want a new word in the English language that describes the particular predicament of having meetings that are separated by awkward intervals of time!”

Wrong. How dare you presume to understand how my mind works? Also, please be patient.

Ten minutes or so before my second meeting, suddenly I get a message on my WhatsApp. “Dear Sidin,” it says, “due to unavoidable circumstances, I will have to cancel our meeting. I hope this is okay?”

“This is fine,” I said. “Let us try and catch up next week when our calendars align.”

My correspondent agreed and then we wished each other a very happy weekend.

Dear readers, what I felt in that moment was the purest form of human delight. Do any of you remember that old advertisement for EsselWorld amusement park in Mumbai, featuring assorted, emotionally uncontrolled children? Now imagine that video playing on loop for 24 hours.

That would still not suffice to capture the glee in my heart.

Readers, there is no greater joy in modern adult existence than the joy you get when someone cancels a meeting, and then also does not reschedule it. And this is a feeling for which we urgently require a word in the English language. And that word is simplicity itself: cancelelation..

Example sentence: “When my 4 p.m. call suddenly got cancelled, I felt such intense cancelelation that I immediately gave my summer interns actual work to do instead of asking ChatGPT for fake projects.”

Do you like this word? Or do you think you can come up with something better? Shall we jump on a call tomorrow? How about at 4 p.m.? I will cancel shortly.

The writer helps early stage companies communicate better. He blogs at www.whatay.com.