The one where I sound hopeful and cheery and mouth lines like “May the new year usher in many joys to heal and hold us in its blessed days” which I promptly trotted out in response to the Boy’s “What shall we text our friends this year?”
The one where I wish upon you the happiness you could just as well receive on September 15th. July 24th. February 2nd. May 9th.
The one where I look back on the days that were and sum up my life in neat little Tupperware containers. Health: C -, Work: B +, Love: A ++
Done. Put a lid on and pack it away. Next, please!
But I’m still here. As are the days and the hours. That layer of dust on the turntable remains unmoved. As does the home I came back to this afternoon. The precise look on Ma’s face when I’ve been gone a while. The way the cabbie spat out his tobacco. The lilt of ‘La Bamba’ each time my phone buzzed. And the firm, warm love that the Boy held out, from one day to the next.
There are still no dustbins in the Borivali National Park. And praline in vanilla fudge ice cream tastes just as good. I’m still struggling to find domestic help for the evening hours. The Bolshoi ballet continues to be sold out. The winter is as unshivering as always. My kiddos are as bouncy as ever. The fan creaks its ancient presence. People live with a rent in their hearts. I still haven’t found the perfect black kurta. The boys at traffic lights keep pimping pirated Adigas. Our arms are wound around ourselves, and sometimes each other, but we must unwrap them post haste, to be thrown up in predetermined celebration as the rapidly appearing milestones shimmer in the smoggy haze. Click a clock. Flick a page. And magically, we’re in Year Next.
But I’m still here. As are the days and the hours. And that layer of dust on the turntable remains unmoved.
Wisdom Wears Neon Pyjamas 
I was thinking the same thing. Except for the date, nothing’s changed.
Have often pondered and thought
Why should NY’s day be fraught
With new resolutions
(And no great intentions)
Will and determination, to any day, can be brought!
What a beautiful way to put across sentiments that so many of us might well be sharing.. Its a lil sad though, to realize that nothing`s really changed. And if anything has for me, its only become scarier!
Anyway, I do have pics. Shall post `em on the blog just for you 🙂
Like wise Like wise… its just -8 +9… nothing less nothing more…
i suppose this must have been.
i haven’t done mine yet. and i am pressurised to get around those wooden letters and hope they arrange themselves in a fashion that doesn’t quite show my complete unpreparedness to usher in a whole new year. and everything around me lies around precisely at the same angle of neglect.
though i have a huge urge to go and wipe the dust off the turntable. i must say.
happy new year.
wish i had your tupperware.
nothing has changed for me as well. except forgetting a few old habits i have nothing to say for the past year. i havent gathered enough dust i suppose, nor changed ringtones.
(i do have a new truth though. it scary, shiny and brittle, and came to me exactly five days before the year ended.)
tempted to share this:
EVERYTHING IS WAITING FOR YOU
(After Derek Mahon) – by David Whyte
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
😀
“But I’m still here. As are the days and the hours.”
And thank God for that. Don’t you be going anywhere, you hear!
“The precise look on Ma’s face when I’ve been gone a while…”
and guess what?
my Ma leaned over, right clicked and copy pasted your Ma’s ‘look’ and wears it when I have been gone awhile
Trust you to summarize general feelings in the best words. Happy new OJ, with lots and lots of love, and prayers for peace and sanity among our fellow beings.
I loved the verse posted by ink & olives! Just dropping by to let you know that I did post those pictures in my blog after all..
D: …and the slow, sad realization that the Christmas vacation is over. 😦
Aunty G: Hear, hear!
Piper: Sometimes unchangingness keeps us from keeling over. Will hop over to look at your pictures.
D rat: Yeah. And math, in my opinion, only makes things worse. 🙂
phish: Cleaning nazis will hereby be felicitated on this blog. All hail!
ink & olives: Good luck with your new truth. I’ll try singing back to my kettle. Or, as Nullah says in ‘Australia’, “I sing you to me.”
M4: I’d like nothing better than to sprout roots and bend over. Life, dammit, always has other plans.
maidinmalaysia: They all go to an underground School for Mothers, I know, I know. There’s no other explanation for how they all think, speak, look and act the same way.
Pallavi: Thank you, girl. And to you too. 🙂
OJ, the more things change, the more they remain the same. I guess it’s just us getting a little older!
And our lives will continue with their imperfections and duty corners and moments of scintillating joy! Cheers to all that:)
dusty corners- sorry
Was that a Freudian slip?
Perhaps(:
Let’s raise a motion wherein we shall, henceforth, celebrate only real changes in our lives… and not change of calendars. I loved this… my sentiments exactly.
Hello OJ!
There it’s done!:)
Personally it was a good year for me after a long time .
Kids health was good(touchwood),work life was fabulous with a promotion thrown in & I moved into a lovely new home.
I second grimescene’s motion.
The new year only brings in new prop-up calenders for the desk. I will mourn on the upcoming birthday, because it is truly then that a year – of achivement that’s always dismal – will have turned.
Another year..same life. Could not say it better than you.
Hoping to store more stuff in the tupperware that holds the A++ category memories for this year.
May it turn out to be the same kind for you:-)
dipali: Oh it couldn’t be anything but. 😉 Cheers to us, Freudian slips and all!
grimescene: Which is why I chuckled while you were ranting.
rajni: Congratulations! 😀 So happy for you. Big hug to Rohit and Nisha.
Nino’s Mum: When, when??? C’mon, spill it!
In love with my life: 5 days into the thing and the graph has already plunged, but yeah, I can hope. Thank you for your wishes.
I’m Aries. And I’ll only take Bottega Venetas, please 🙂
And I’m praying for you dad.
Nino’s Mum: Oh you’re some way off, then. And I take only cute three-year-olds as return presents. 😛 Thank you for your prayers.