With Asawari home on New Year’s evening, it felt right to
herald 2012 with people who really and truly cared about us. So we packed up
and got into the car to drive to Mohali to be with Dad and Mom on the 31st
Dec 2011.
It felt right. It felt right to just cut a small Chocolate
cake to mark the over hyped event and call it a day. We did nothing special
other than eat dinner together and talk and laugh before switching on the electric
blankets! Dad got up and went on his usual morning walk the next day and a few
hours later, we too were driving back to Delhi.
Oh yes, there was all the razzmatazz on TV and sounds of
distant firecrackers going off in celebration.
Celebration of what, I wondered. That we have one year less
to live? The fact that at least for that split moment when the lights dip at
11.59 pm, there is an ephemeral and self-delusionary notion of a new beginning,
of another chance, of a clean opportunity. Or is it that we are congratulating
ourselves on having survived yet another year of life’s turbulent and menopausal
swings?
The frenzied glassiness of high decibel evenings, the
courtesy hand pumps and revellers stamping two left feet, I have lived through
several of those. I have danced till the wee and beyond sore feet, I have
smiled until split weary, I have been high on the company of friends and the
benevolent daffy air, I have invariably left New Years’ venues with extreme
reluctance but there has been over and above the digital din that little voice,
“What am I doing here?”
We cling to repetitive rituals, we repeat confetti charades, and
we set up a raucous racket…..all in an effort to dull the pain of living. The
New Year’s party is our annual analgesic! It is essentially a glamorous
exercise in self-deception. It is our yearly lie to ourselves. It is an
obstinate reluctance to see the truth that time is slipping like sand through
our fingers and that 2012 is going to be no different from 2011 unless we turn
Trojan.
Nah…no amount of sophomoric jollification will drown out the
indifference of a son, the non-acknowledgement from bosses, the outgrowing of
friends, the death of romance, the bitterness of a daughter, the blaming by a
husband, the disappointment of a parent, the whimsy of servants, the greying hair and sagging tone, that heart-breaking final burst over the hill to suddenly
come face to face with mortality and the realization that this thing called
life, that was so special and in the rosy future at 20 is already past us….when
did that happen?
Of course not, all is right with the world. We are here until eternity! Let us continue our obsession with the non-essentials.
Of course not, all is right with the world. We are here until eternity! Let us continue our obsession with the non-essentials.
A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
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