As any year draws to a close, some despondency is inevitable. One looks back at the sands of time that one has let slip through gaps in tight-clenched fists. Achievements of the year seem insignificant when measured against disappointments and unrealised dreams. The opportunities lost during the year, as also in the past, come to mock one, especially in that grey zone between being wide awake and fast asleep.
For us, my wife and I, the year 2020 had an exciting start; with the bursting of crackers and bright fireworks shooting high into the sky, their reflection shimmering in a placid sea. It was an exotic setting that a stay-at-home couple like us would have found difficult to imagine – on a remote island off the coast of Cambodia. The end of this year would also have been difficult for us to imagine – an end so dull that even a couple like us will consider it boring. Just the two of us cloistered at home, with not even the next door neighbour to share a drink with.
I am sure I am not the only one who can’t wait for this bizarre year to end. So today, with a week or more yet to go, I bid farewell to 2020! Good riddance to a year which made us realise we all have unsuspected vulnerabilities. A year in which we also discovered we had unexpected strengths. We realised that there is so much we can live without. And so much that we cannot live without.
No one is perfect, and before this year came around, all of us in our own ways had got accustomed to our frailties. Thus I was quite reconciled to the fact that I have diabetes and you were happy that you have only hypertension and she considered herself blessed that her asthma was mild. But this year rudely termed our very human failings as ‘co-morbidities’, making us think that the traitors were our very own bodies! Unlike ever in the past, this year to stay healthy became an obsession, a pursuit and an end in itself for us.
I seem to have lost more friends this year than in any other. But it has always been thus. Each year is one more year added to all our lives and our ages. The Wuhan virus has managed to claim a few from among those we knew. Thus even as the tally might not be more, it certainly seems more unfair.
So, I cannot wait for this year to end. And I hope the coming year is different for you and for us. I wish everyone a year that should be unlike 2020!
I end with “Hanukkah Sameach!” to my Jew friends. “Happy Holidays!” to my oh-so-politically correct friends. “Joyous Erastide” and “Happy Decemberween” to my friends with a literary bent of mind. “Good Governance Day” greetings to all my sarkari and sanskari friends. “Heri za Kwanzaa!” to all my Afro-American friends and a Merry Christmas to all!
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