"Extracurricular" activities

Growing up in an urban, educated,  middle-class milieu in India meant I would frequently be confronted with questions like "What are your hobbies?" or "what kind of extracurricular activities do you pursue?"  I was never completely convinced why it was necessary to have such hobbies, or why it would be important to keep my classmate's mom updated on it.

I have always found it particularly difficult to explain my "activities" to other people.  Particularly because reading or thinking random things, or dreaming and sleeping, did not count among the acceptable kinds of constructive "extracurricular activities" to these incredibly uptight people. I think this is what in part built up my aversion to sports, music or art, or at least the ways in which they are apparently practised by most normal people.  

I cannot help but notice this trend in my peers, of making lists of their accomplishments, and filling it with their performances and awards in poetry competitions or athletic meets. I look at these smart young things, that speak of social activism and volunteering for NGOs as if it was another feather in their cap, another addition to their list of daddy-approved "extracurricular activities", and shake my head with  incomprehension and inadequacy.  Is the irony of structuring what is supposed to be your leisure time, into these hoops and loops of socially approved accomplishment, so hard to get?