'Tis the season to be jolly

It is a wonder how the human mind finds innumerable reasons to celebrate. Take New Year's Eve for example. It is one time of the year when there is an excitement of something ending and something new beginning. Therein lies one of the oldest concepts that we so unabashedly use in our work. Particularly we mind you. The concept of a reset.

So here goes.

Every New Year’s Eve I look back in retrospection (because one does not have any choice in the matter having been bludgeoned into looking back, by the world in general and the media and idiot box in particular) at the year gone by. I peruse through the months spent in arduous work that includes the daily struggle to pull myself out of bed and the angry bickering and noise of the traffic that I swim through, getting rather bothered and dusty I might add, in the process of leading a life. I am struck with the absolute horror of monotony not realizing that monotony pays. And pays quite well too!

It is not that I do not find anything worth noting in the year gone by. I see the miniscule amount by which my hairline has receded and the horrifying amount by which my midsection has prospered. If there is but one thing that I would have liked to interchange, it would probably be this. Then I take note of the people. All like me and each in his/her own way, trying to be different…like me. The new people I have met and the people I fell out with. The old friends and their new found joys in study, family or children. The family members, especially the little ones grown older and the older ones ageing fast.

I take note of the decisions made in the last year. Decisions in my opinion are underrated. Especially when taken in career and money matters. For one, there is nothing much to decide if one looks objectively. It is more a choice rather than a decision. I took a new job. Made a decision and then made a choice. Then of course, I moved into a new house and spent a considerable amount of effort trying to make it into a home. There is still something missing, they tell me, one involving major decision taking and one I am happy to procrastinate about.

I take note of humanity. And the lack thereof. For, the monotony that pays very well also effectively draws the shutter on the evil beings we humans are. On one hand are a people encroached upon on the pretext of WMD, not found and probably will never be found. The mutually agreeable deals struck with the big guns, the effects of which will be seen much later, when we as a people will become signatory to the NPT. On the other hand are the steps away from civilization with the great Hindutva movement and the Islamic Jehad and the alarming effects of the fight against terrorism and also, as always, terrorism itself.

Then I take note no more. Being much too tired to go on in retrospect. Just before 12 midnight, in the din of fireworks and the cries of exhalted and high spirited people (literally), I reach out for the reset button. I promise to break the monotony. I promise to make amends and I promise to eat less and work out to stay thin. I promise to try and make the world a better place.

A few days later, the entire world realizes that its reset has failed.