As the last page of the calendar is flipped for the month of December and woollen cardigans are pulled out of closets, while employees figure out how they to use up the remaining casual leave before the month-end, you realise you're nearing that time of the year again. Over the next couple of weeks, shops start taking frantic inventory, assignments are tackled on a war footing, deadlines are wrapped up frantically, even the government stirs its lead-like posterior and reluctantly moves a pace or two.
Department stores put up banners, announcing non-existent sales when they have actually marked up their prices 20%. By the end of the second week, like an embryo slowly taking shape, plans start getting more crystallised. Around this time, the words “New Year” are heard for the first time....
There's something about the New Year that makes the staunchest of hearts go all wistful. Perhaps it's the symbolic idea of starting afresh; a second chance (or even a thirty-second chance) that appeals infinitely to the bungling idiot in all of us. For one thing, around this time, the media feels it's obliged to go all soppy, philosophising about the inevitable passage of time and all that pollyrot.
Then there is the mandatory bit of recalling and reminiscing, even if the year that went by wasn't all that great to begin with. Every publication worth its publishing ink will carry a feature on 'The Year That Was,' showing virtually identical and utterly forgettable photographs of accidents, incidents, historic handshakes and histrionic fiascos - events we've become totally saturated with, over the last twelve months. Film glossies will list the year's biggest hits and misses and whether Dee Pee's wedding was bigger than Pee Cee's.
And you sit back and wonder: is the year really over? For that matter, when did it start? Just when you're getting used to writing the correct date in checks and mails, it's time to change it again. Sometimes you look back at all the years gone by and wonder: where did they all go? Is there a calendars' graveyard like there is for elephants and automobiles or do they just go up to the great big almanac in the sky? Years also tend to stand out for what they offered: some may have been great for your love life, while some may have felt like a steamroller had run over you in slow motion - with action replay.
The New Year is also synonymous with the ubiquitous bugbear of resolutions. While one's own resolutions are viewed as being essential to forging one's character, other people's are seen as being silly and superficial. Research proves that in any given year, half the number of people will decide to give up smoking, go on a diet or open their own business, which will shut down by mid-March.
It's also the time one is bombarded with a plethora of useless goods and services. First, there are the omnipresent, omnipotent diaries. Every Tom, Dick and Haribhai who is into manufacturing anything from ball-bearings to bathroom buckets will send them “with best compliments,” labouring under the delusion that this brilliant promotion tactic will immediately catapult his two-bit outfit into the Fortune 500. Then there are the calendars, another evil of epidemic proportions - a montage of blurred artworks featuring birds, flowers or skinny, skimpily fitted girls in various stages of undress.
The Final Countdown
Across the city, the elite will announce a series of parties, each one trying to outdo the other -barbecues & bonfires; jamborees & jam sessions; fancy dress parties, fancy undress parties, stag parties, drag parties, wife-swapping parties, back-stabbing parties, come-as-you-are parties, come-as-you-never-were parties etc.
Every pokey little hotel will organize a dance in the hope of squeezing the last bit of moolah from its patrons before the year runs out. The band in this case usually consists of tone deaf, high school dropouts who specialise in unsynchronised, off-key melodies at least 45 years old.
And when the big night arrives, there they are: the young and not-so-young; uncertain looking prima donnas in garish costumes, with three inches of make-up, accompanied by sad looking escorts - skinny males in baggy suits who look like they were dragged against their better judgement. Everyone looks nervous, but figure that since they've shelled out a fat package, they're going to enjoy themselves - even if it kills them. Once in a while, they twitch their legs spasmodically in a feeble impersonation of an Aztec mating ritual, and the one who looks the least ridiculous wins a set of plastic combs as a prize.
What follows is the final countdown when some joker starts counting how many seconds are left before the lights are briefly switched off. This serves two purposes: one, it saves on the exorbitant electricity bill resulting from the mile-long string of light bulbs. Two, it helps nervous young males sneak a quick peck from their ice maidens under the protective cover of darkness.
Home Is Where the Art Is
At the other end of the spectrum, are the smart ones who feel it's better to stay at home and be bored by your own family, rather than a bunch of perfect strangers at a club. Entertainment in this case consists of checking out what retrograde rubbish is on cable.
The networks have been crying themselves hoarse over the past few days, intimating and intimidating viewers with the line-up. The anchor is usually an out-of-work, over-the-hill actor who ekes out a living by doing charity shows in the Middle East. Next, you're faced with a totally anonymous bimbo starlet, who looks like all the other 157 totally anonymous bimbo starlets, trying to raise their ratings by lowering their neckline.
In between commercial breaks, you're subjected to an overdose of neighbourly cacophony and bonhomie from over-dressed, over-weight housewives and elderly dudes in striped pyjamas. By the time the telecast is over and you're ready to crawl into bed (hopefully your own), you wonder if you might have been better off at the Dhingra Club.
In the end, one wonders, what is it that makes grown men and women act like this - wearing silly hats, blowing pennywhistles and generally doing things they will try very hard to forget over the next twelve months. In essence, the occasion has been reduced to a mechanical ritual like everything else - right from downing your fourth vodka at the party to plonking a kiss on your shapely neighbour's cheek. (Her reaction, when she shows you the underside of her footwear, might be a little more spontaneous.)
On a slightly existential note, in the last few remaining hours, you wonder where all those weeks and months went, and whether you achieved anything of significance.
A touch of remorse, a twinge of regret for things done (and not done) might be felt, amid an awareness that this moment too will soon pass into history, never to be written again as a date on a check or letter.
You look back at some of the dumb things you've done over the last 12 months, and are thankful that those monumental blunders are now a thing of the past and you can move on to greater things in life - like running for the mahagathbandhan in 2019. But life, like always, has its own plans. Barely will the sun have risen the next day and your hangover subsided, that you'll be back to doing those same dim-witted things you specialise in so well - making colossal judgemental errors and putting your foot in your mouth at every other step.
But before you decide to call it a day, it's not over yet - not till the fat lady throws up. All through the rest of the night, loaded brats in high spirits (pun intended) will continue zooming on city streets, horns blaring; total strangers will thump you between the shoulder blades, yelling high-decibel greetings; and each time you try to turn in, some sozzled drunk will call up to wish you, long past midnight. All at a time when you should instead have been trying your chances with the divorcee aunty next door. Who knows: on a night like this when everyone is acting crazy, you might even have got lucky.
Dinyar T. Dastoor
(The author is a freelance writer/editor/columnist.)