Hopping on one leg
I’ve never been able to make up my mind about New Year’s Eve. Or birthdays. Or any festival for that matter. The exaggerated overblown sense of anticipation which marks the run-up to the Big Day is somehow never matched by the actual celebrations.
One feels letdown. The disappointment is coupled with relief — thank god, it’s over! Now, one can return to what one knows best: getting on with one’s unprepossessing day-to-day life.
In other parts of the world, New Year’s Eve is when people step out of their homes, walk the streets, gather in public spaces. It’s a time to meet strangers, submerge your identity in that of the collective. In London, for example, 1000s gather along the embankment on River Thames to watch the fireworks around the London Eye. In New York, large crowds gather to watch the lowering of the Times Square Ball at the stroke of midnight.
In India, the celebration remains a very private affair. The middle class retreats from the streets and into the safety of their homes or familiar restaurants. No one walks the streets in collective celebration. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you the streets are dangerous. Besieged, we sit at home and watch TV. Earlier, almost always, it was Usha Uthup singing cover versions of popular western numbers in bangles and sari; now, we watch reruns of American shows, a fake festive theme running through all of them, actors pretending it’s Christmas months in advance.
While most of us choose the safety of our sofa sets, there are brave Indians who have dared to step out of their homes to mingle with the mob. We watch with a mixture of smugness and horror as a news channel shows us video footage of a girl being groped by hooligans at the Gateway of India. We can’t stop ourselves from saying: “Told you so.”
We are not the only ones losing it on the streets on New Year’s Day. I remember Millennium Eve in Dublin as being a rather bleak affair. The roads were deserted and full of drunks. Police presence was skeletal. By seven in the evening, one felt an eerie vibe rising from the littered streets like summer heat. As if riots had just taken place and a curfew had been clamped on the city. I had walked down to the neighbourhood Oddbins to pick up some beer; walking back home, I hurried past an old woman slurring at the world at large, and smashing bottles on the pavement, an old man puking his guts out outside a chipper.
I was a student at Oxford then and staying with a friend in Dublin. My girlfriend of seven years was with me. It was a strange night, the last night of the 20th century. Both of us felt its weight. Maybe, in our heart of hearts, we knew that our relationship had run its course. I suppose we could both feel this but it hadn’t developed into an articulate thought yet. That would happen once we returned to India. Still, as we moved around a warm, unfamiliar kitchen, hustling up an Indian meal, there was a coldness between us.
No rage or bitterness — that would follow, but for now, a distance had opened up, a quiet little space which would widen into a gulf over the coming weeks. In many ways, I think we had both succumbed to the pressures and symbolism of 31st December, a date which has an unmistakable ring of finality to it. A phase of our lives had ended. Tomorrow was a new year, a new century, a new beginning. We had met while still in school. We were adults now. It was time to part ways, start again.
* * *
A year ends. Another begins. A tinge of sadness at what’s over, what could have been. Concurrent with this, a sense of anticipation about what awaits us in the coming 12 months. New hopes and fears. Fresh uncertainties.
What do we want from 2011? A whole bunch of things really. Maybe this will be the year when Amitabh Bachchan finally retires and spares us his wig and shades; when our cricket team brings home the World Cup; when Indians realise that the Nano is just another car, not a symbol of poverty. We hope that our news channels will revamp their panelists (so we don’t have to see the same talking heads on TV every night); that onion and tomato prices will come down; that the West will finally realise there is more to India than curry and call centres; that Shah Rukh Khan will regain his charisma; that Karan Johar will stop saying “The both of you”; that Indians will develop a reading habit overnight and start buying books by the kilo.
And what about the ordinary year that has just passed into history? Our collective memory is already playing tricks with us. As Arun Kolatkar writes in a poem called ‘Man of the Year’ (written from the perspective of a stuffed effigy, one of several that are set alight at road crossings in Kala Ghoda, Mumbai, on New Year’s Eve):
I did not resolve any conflicts,
or presume to solve any
of the perennial questions of philosophy.
There were no technological breakthroughs,
no big leaps;
just a lot of hopping around on one foot.
No new ideas.
A lot of old ones served with a sizzle,
with plenty of spice to mask the rotten smell.
The good news, on the other hand,
is that schoolboys
and girls will not have to memorise me.
Who got the Nobel for literature?
Who the Booker?
Who won the cup at Wimbledon?
And who did Time magazine pick
as the Man of the Year?
I have already forgotten.
For many of us, though the year hasn’t ended yet because in multicultural India there isn’t just one New Year. 31st December is only the beginning. If you break your resolution, say, to quit smoking in January, you’ll get another chance in March or April; in fact, you’ll get several chances: Ugadi, Gudi Padwa, Puthandu, Cheti Chand, Makar Sankranti, Navreh, Bihu, Navroz…take your pick, for the new year’s season is just beginning.
