A very happy new year! No, it’s not a repeat of an old writeup. Still baffled by the New Year greeting, that too when the nippy January has reluctantly passed over the baton to a balmy February.
Dear intelligentsia, my predicament is: Till when can a year be sanely considered new and greeted so? Who gets to decide the expiry or rather best-before date of an ongoing year?
I am certainly not a party hopper looking for an excuse to indulge in the year-ending/beginning carnival, nor a party pooper. I respect individual discretion in bidding farewell or according reception, to well, maybe a calendar leaf. Technically, December 31 is the expiry date of a given year, however, we bid adieu to the novelty of a year by first week of January, that is, if our enthusiasm manages to slog through that far. For majority of us, revelry lasts only for the first day of the year or till the hangover of last night’s celebration.
No, don’t be judgemental as yet. I am not advocating that we go on partying for 365 days of the year. To me, the advent of New Year insinuates elation, sanguinity and anticipation of a bright future ahead. While laughing off the WhatsApp joke ‘same job, same boss and same spouse, what’s new about the year’, somewhere inside we all realise that there’s no genie to grant our wishes at the stroke of midnight on December 31. Still, we can’t help being speckled by the magic dust of optimism and believing that dawn of New Year would usher in happiness and progress. Irrespective of how you choose to welcome it, by painting the town red with your gang, dancing away the night, offering prayers, doling charity or simply sulking in front of idiot box, there’s no missing the celebratory bandwagon on New Year eve. The fervour continues next morning with smiling faces instinctively greeting all and sundry ‘Happy New Year’. Well, that’s surely a heartening start to a hopefully propitious year. But no sooner does your soul soaks in the warmth of obligatory goodwill than the New Year charisma begins to wane. The euphoric symphony falls flat before reaching its crescendo.
{{/usCountry}}No, don’t be judgemental as yet. I am not advocating that we go on partying for 365 days of the year. To me, the advent of New Year insinuates elation, sanguinity and anticipation of a bright future ahead. While laughing off the WhatsApp joke ‘same job, same boss and same spouse, what’s new about the year’, somewhere inside we all realise that there’s no genie to grant our wishes at the stroke of midnight on December 31. Still, we can’t help being speckled by the magic dust of optimism and believing that dawn of New Year would usher in happiness and progress. Irrespective of how you choose to welcome it, by painting the town red with your gang, dancing away the night, offering prayers, doling charity or simply sulking in front of idiot box, there’s no missing the celebratory bandwagon on New Year eve. The fervour continues next morning with smiling faces instinctively greeting all and sundry ‘Happy New Year’. Well, that’s surely a heartening start to a hopefully propitious year. But no sooner does your soul soaks in the warmth of obligatory goodwill than the New Year charisma begins to wane. The euphoric symphony falls flat before reaching its crescendo.
{{/usCountry}}Suddenly, the year is no longer new and not so happy either. The desire of magnificence gives way to despair of mundane. Like zombies we go ahead with the business of life for the rest of the year waiting for the redeemer, December 31, to liberate us. Now that’s what I have a problem with, this prejudice against the rest of the days of a year. January 1 is no doubt the first blank page of a 365-page book but, only the first. The enthusiasm with which we approach it is commendable, but this zeal needs to be retained for writing/living every single page of this storybook called life. Each departing day deserves an amiable farewell and a new one, an astounding welcome. Let us not saddle only one day with the baggage of our expectations. Let us realise our dreams steadily in imminent months, weeks, days, hours and moments. Thus, if Happy New Year sounds unreasonable at this time of the year, how about wishing each other ‘A Happy New Day’, every day.