In the year 2025

The new year has come and gone. Let me rephrase. What I mean by that is that New Year’s Day or January the First Anno Domini has come. And gone. In the blink of an eye. The new year 2025 is very much with us, alive and kicking, and will overstay its welcome until the next December 31^st puts in an appearance and breathes its last. It will first open its bleary eyes Down Under in Australasia and slowly work its way northwards when you will hear inebriated folks from the Far East, Asia and the Middle East dancing, shouting and screaming Happy New Year in silly, fancy dress and blowing party hooters and kazoos. As for the Middle East, I cannot vouch for what manner of jollification, if any, will take place as they read, write and view everything backwards.

As the earth’s rotation sees time gaining, the celebrations will then gravitate further on towards the western hemisphere, where most of their good citizens, having drunk themselves cross-eyed on Christmas Eve, will be seen staggering out of bars and pubs. Sloshed to the gills, they will decorate the pavements of London’s Trafalgar Square, New York’s Times Square and Calcutta’s Park Street by throwing up and barely being able to open their eyes on January 1^st, with an extremely sore head, vowing never to touch any form of spirit for the remainder of their lives. A promise that will be broken within 24 hours. ‘Black coffee, please,’ will be the cry going out on the late morning of New Year’s Day . When Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in his blank verse poem Ulysses (not to be confused with James Joyce’s stream of consciousness epic of the same name), wrote about drinking ‘life to the lees,’ he had something far more positive in mind, that of enjoying life to the fullest. New Year’s Eve revellers start the evening with similar pious and optimistic intentions, but as the clock chimes 12 at the witching hour, their misery is just beginning. It is a never-ending, reverberating annual cycle.

As if to make everybody’s life more complicated, the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr Vivek Murthy (it had to be a person of Indian origin), has warned the world at large that consumption of alcohol is linked directly to cancer and that we should ignore all that rubbish about a small tot of whisky a day keeping the doctor away. The good doctor recommends instead, and I am guessing, an apple a day to keep your GP (and BP) at bay. It is unlikely that Dr Murthy will win any popularity poll in the near future. A violent response from makers of alcoholic beverages, bar owners and publicans can shortly be expected.

I can hear many of you muttering under your breath and going, ‘What’s he jabbering on about? This is sacrilege, probably Senility and its twin brother Cynicism, launching a pincer attack on humankind. Surely, once or twice a year we are allowed to get roaring drunk, hug and kiss everyone within reach?’ Well, you will not be far off the bull’s eye there. Let me come straight out and square with you, reader. All religious and other celebrations are fine with me, irrespective of the denomination. Hugging and kissing are optional extras, but likely to be looked askance. In India, we celebrate round the year. Public holidays marking religious milestones keep happening every month. I don’t believe any other country enjoys as many holidays thanks to auspicious festivals cutting across all faiths as we do. Just turn the monthly pages on your calendar and the rash of red dates speak for themselves. Hurrah, Mubarak and Sabhash for that! Not for nothing do we cry ourselves hoarse that we are a secular nation.

My beef (sorry, I should have said complaint or crib or employed some other less incendiary term) is that we are never left alone to think in solitude about the year just gone by, particularly all the resolutions we made at the start of the year and managed not to keep even a single one. One needs to be with one’s own thoughts. Good luck with that at a New Year’s Eve party. Quiet reflection is not possible with people milling around you, mumbling incoherent, slurring sweet nothings. Was I kind to animals last year? Let me think. Just then some, punch-drunk, well-meaning soul manages to ‘accidentally on purpose’ upend half a glass of beer all over my trousers. One should be grateful for small mercies that he did not vomit on them. Did I contribute generously to the neighbourhood orphanage when they came round knocking on my door last month? Did I contribute anything at all? While my thoughts are turning over this question, the sound system volume is unbearably turned up with Elvis belting out It’s Now or Never. It’s worse than that, it is actually some wannabe Elvis murdering that song with the help of the ubiquitous karaoke. ‘Never’ is probably the right answer with respect to my contribution to said orphanage. Did I need Elvis or his misguided clone to remind me of this? Oh dear! O Sole Mio!

In the year 1969, a little-known American duo named Zager & Evans had a number one hit song in the world’s pop charts. In the year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus) was on everyone’s lips. Everyone that is, who was actively interested in western popular music, as many of us were at the time. Zager & Evans were soon forgotten, but the song came to my mind vividly as 2025 dawned on us. I can hardly be expected to wait till 2525 to talk about it as I will be residing among the stars in 500 years’ time. As will you, dear reader. The song had an apocalyptic, science fiction ring to it as the lyrics attempted to predict what might happen in 2525, all the way up to 9595! The parenthetical sub-title, Exordium & Terminus translates from the original Latin to The Beginning and The End. With the flower-power generation of the 60s, expressing emotions in Latin, French, German or even Sanskrit was par for the course. Beat poets of the time like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were doing it all the time. Not to mention T.S. Eliot’s ‘Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata’ and ‘Shantih, Shantih, Shantih’ from The Waste Land.

Getting back to 2525, the song’s lyrics suggest, as the decades pass, of robots, test-tube babies and a hint of man’s ultimate extinction from planet earth. The opening verse goes, In the year 2525, if man is still alive / If woman can survive, they may find / In the year 3535, Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lie / Everything you think, do and say / Is in the pill you took today. We are still 500 years shy of Zager & Evans’ futuristic crystal ball, but much of what they sing about is already happening. Artificial Intelligence was not in their vocabulary during the 60s. Or the 70s, 80s and 90s, though scientists were fooling around with the idea from 1950.

Now that we are part of the new millennium, social media is the latest malady to infect our lives. You cannot live with it and you cannot live without it. In pre- WhatsApp and Facebook days, we could handpick the friends and relatives we wished to personally greet or send cards to. These days, you are part of several social media groups and once the first person puts out a meme, smiley or an emoji wishing us all the very best, there is a cascading effect. 250 people will respond in similar fashion and woe betide a member of the group who does not join the fray. Mind you, there are a handful of people in these groups who are dear to you and to whom you will gladly exchange good wishes. That said, what is the point in responding to a goodwill message from Bandhan Bank, Swiggy’s or Big Basket when you cannot put a face to them? Frankly, I have had my fill of fridge-magnet platitudes that ping every 10 seconds on my mobile phone during the latter half of December.  As Elton John admitted in one of his songs, ‘I am a genuine example of a social disease.’

Happy New Year. ‘Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata’ (be charitable, be compassionate, exercise self-control). ‘Shantih, Shantih, Shantih.’