So, Planet Earth has gone around the Sun one more time. It's been doing that even before hominids even thought to look up at the sky. It will continue doing so long after the next Ice Age or whatever other cataclysm lies in store, somewhere (hopefully) in a too distant future.... meanwhile, at some point of time, "modern" man invented a whole lot of stuff, from aeroplanes to atom bombs to ziggurats and zithers. Somewhere, along the way, we also invented "time", "discovered" how to measure it, split it up into years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds, nano seconds and God (another of our "inventions") knows what else....
When I think of "time" it seems to me that it is like a marker on a vast, unmapped land. Helping us to put a reference to events, memories. Remember THAT day? When you were married? When she was born? When your best friend died? Goddamn, remember that day when you stupid bloody insurance policy is due to expire?!! So, yes, time (specifically, the way we measure it) is quite a neat trick, a sleight of mind, quite useful.
And, as with most of our inventions, not content to merely creating the utility, we've also built elaborate rituals around Time - so, we celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, observe fasts and sacraments on specified dates.... and thus, in one such "time honoured tradition", New Year's Eve rolled around once again yesterday. As good a time as any to look back and wonder/ponder....
The excitement of childhood, when my school's academic year used to be the calendar year. A New Year meant a new class, the smell of new books & brown paper covers, the excitement of walking in to a new class, the eagerness to find out which of our classmates came through, the disappointment of discovering friends who'd stayed behind having failed, the unspeakable fear of meeting new classmates who - being a year older but having failed - waited to welcome you with their bullying stares....
That innocence, inevitably, giving way to adolescent rowdy eagerness in later teen years as the New Year's Eve meant "party time", gathering of friends, cheap booze, smokes, revelry... a long period of adolescence growing well into the mid 20s and even early 30s.... when "fun" meant being out, "enjoying" loud music, frenzied roaming the streets, drunkenly cheering strangers with wild cries of "Happy New Year", "Happy 1990" or whatever number it happened to be....
Until 31st December 2002 when, on arrival in Mumbai - the city that used to say "Raat ko baara baje din nikalta hai" - venturing out for the first New Year Eve party in Mumbai I realised that I was getting nowhere, stuck in an interminable traffic jam! 3 hours in my car, alone, stuck, motionless, while the RJs on the FM stations pretended that life was gonna be fun!
And so, winding down to yesterday. A quiet evening. At home. With a dear, dear friend, Arun Jaiswar. Pleasant, rambling conversations, about this, that, and nothing. Even quieter silences, in the comfort that exists among the best of friends. A little bit of music. And, as always, booze. A good bottle of Chivas. We did justice to the "tradition".
Truly, time rolled by. We've aged, grown older, perhaps (and this is quite doubtful) even wiser. But, hey, this is TIME we're talking about. Constant. Ever changing. Never changing. So, grey hair not withstanding, we boozed till well past 1... because, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Main SAMAYY Hoon.....
Sats
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