Why one must take stock on New Year
New Day. New life. Not really. New day, same life. Whichever way you look at it, the end of something is usually tinged with sadness, while the beginning has the promise of freshness, the optimism of a clean slate.
There are two kinds of people. Those who think that New Year’s Eve is overhyped - it’s just another day. And those who spend millions of dollars chasing the New Year from Sydney to LA. The majority of us though lie somewhere in the middle. Some nights we celebrate, some years we stay in.
Birthdays and New Year’s Eve/Day are good days to take stock. This is not to say that you sit in judgment over your life and be harsh on yourself, or pat yourself on the back too much, but these are good days to go for a walk alone, and think about what you’ve done, what you can do, and where you’re headed next. It’s important to mark these days if not for anything but to commemorate the fact of being among the living: as Jarvis Cocker sings: ‘I’m happy just to be alive.’
What one misses in India is the safety and pleasure of celebrating in a public space with strangers. Middle class India disappears into enclaves to have a good time. Too many unknowns in the outside world of 1.4 billion people. Too many class divisions. What we miss out on is participating in collective celebration, where we can merge our identities in the crowd and feel as one.
I’ve had some memorable experiences on New Year’s Eve. The good ones don’t make a good story, so I’ll give you the bad or at least the more interesting ones. The time I came back home drunk and all was good until I suddenly lurched and hit my head against something.
My forehead was bloody; not a pleasant thing to wake up with. I remember being furious with myself - it was like Karun Nair making a triple century, then tripping and falling flat on his nose on the way to the pavilion after having survived the bouncers. I’d done all the hard work but failed in the last mile. God had been unkind.
Another party I remember following Manoj Bajpai like a private security guard for the entire evening. Can’t remember what led to his making this remark but it was unforgettable: He said: "You guys think that we actors are rich lekin ye bilkul sach nahin hai yaar." For the record, I don’t know him at all; the whisky inside of me had befriended him, not me.
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| I remember many New Year’s Eves spent watching Usha Uthup singing George Michael’s Faith on Doordarshan. (Photo: India Today) |
I remember many New Year’s Eves spent watching Usha Uthup singing George Michael’s Faith on Doordarshan. Those were simpler socialist times. It didn’t take much to make us happy. A slight change from the usual fare was more than enough.
One December 31, I found myself at Mumbai’s Filmcity. What I witnessed there was pure pathos. A film crew was hard at work. A young actress was shooting a "saawan" song. The fans would whirr, the sprinklers be turned on and she’d lip-sync the words to a song.
Cut. Her mother, standing to the side, would rush in with a towel and wrap her daughter in it. The lesson I learnt - I was 16 then - was that everything you do takes toil, sacrifice and mom, even acting in a B-grade film that no one will watch.
Finally, what’s a new year without resolutions? Resolutions are the most obvious way of marking a new beginning. For most of us, they’re about breaking old habits and cultivating new ones. They’re also about human relationships - friendships, love, family.
Ignore the cynics who say: people never change. People do change. And we bring about that transformation only when we feel the need to want to bring about that change deep within ourselves. If one wants it badly, one will get.
Resolutions are guiding lights - we might not realise them fully, but the closer we approximate, the better we feel.
If you’re looking for love, stop blaming all men or all women. Find out what you want, be yourself, and you’ll find the right person with kindred temperament.
If you’re looking to spend more time with your family, don’t have the fear of missing out on something happening somewhere else. That will spoil it. And if you have an addiction, think this: if you’re doing something for pleasure but it’s stopped giving you pleasure and you’re doing it for the sake of it, then the substance has lost its meaning.
Nothing like a clear head on a beautiful day. The fog will clear up. It will take time but you will reap rich rewards.
There will be no regret in hindsight, no lamenting of opportunities lost, none of the negative feelings that haunt and nag you every moment you are in the throes of addiction. You will experience this as a gush of relief. When you’ve quit and you’re clean you also gain in moral strength - you’ll be able to stand up for what you believe in, and that, itself, is a heady feeling - whether you get what you want is immaterial.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)