New Year and the Illusion of Time

I, like most, look forward to the New Year. But I do so more silently... No pomp and show for me. I am of the belief that New Year's Days, Birthdays and such are just another days in our lives that do not deserve much attention. A Friday morning on any week of the year should be seen as a Friday morning and nothing more, irrespective of what the Calendar says about that day. What I had to do a Friday morning, I still have to do... nothing changes. Sure a News year's day (don't get me wrong, I mean the hours of day light in the Northern Hemisphere...) is slightly longer than that of the New year's Eve... but the second day of the New year is also slightly longer than the first... it is only because the Winter solstice was 10 days ago. But resetting a calendar does serve an important purpose... it brings us hope... Each and every one of us messes up some way or the other and want to get a fresh start but the past often haunts us... resetting the calendar somehow tells us that it is time for a fresh start. Each and everyone of us have a purple patch that we want to last for ever but when the year comes to an end, we are somehow forced to consolidate our gains thus far and take a fresh start in the next year... we can only sincerely hope that our purple patch follows us into the next year as well.

So, I Wish Us All A Very Happy New Year! Let us all conveniently live in the illusion that there are new beginnings at the beginning of each year and that with the resetting of the calendar we erase our mistakes from the previous year and of course take our purple patch with us into the new year.

Sivakumar's thoughtprovoking interview.

The title of this embedded video is misleading... It has nothing to do with the "Beep Song"... But it is a must watch.


I respect Sivakumar for speaking his heart out on some of the serious social issues facing multicultural developing nations like India. All linguistic fanatics must watch this... So should those who are hell bent of defaming some of our past national leaders like Gandhiji and Pandit Nehru who contributed a lot to our society... sure, like everyone else they too had their shortcomings but they cannot defend their actions now... they are long gone. So what is the point in smearing filth on them? I am guilty of this too. Hope I refrain from being too critical of our past national leaders.

But don't get me wrong, there are some leaders who have been pure evil... dictators who established a predatory state that espoused draconian laws of segregation and discrimination. It is important to get the facts straight about these barbarians as history is often too kind to these villains (what more can you expect when they themselves appointed their historians). That said, there is no point in lamenting about the treachery imposed on our ancestors, it might only build hatred against the innocent kith and kin of these villains.