AS THE CALENDAR CHANGED…

Happy New Year!
Look at a couple of last year’s New Year cartoons first, before I get to the beef.
(Actually I couldn’t find any relevant cartoons for 2008, so I am making it look as if I am being very reflective and wise, which I am often mistaken to be. On most of these occasions, the truth is I made an attempt at humor that fell flatter than Kangana Ranaut’s chest.)

(source: http://www.faithmouse.com)

(source:http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20061227/cartoon20061227.gif)

Many of the world’s deservingly unsung characters were doing one of the following (or other):
1. Vomiting on someone’s car tyre, shoes, floor, commode (most likely), etc.
2. Close dancing with partner while getting furtively felt up by sozzled neighbor in the dance floor.
3. Shouting ‘YAY’ or whatever passes for language on New Year’s Eve. Of course, I forgot, shouting ‘HAPPEE NEW YEAARR!’ as of this is the first time in human history that mankind has witnessed such an occasion.
4. Spending the night cleaning the vomit on the shirt of a drunk teenager brought to the Hospital Emergency after a car crash, if you are a nurse like our Jackie or ER doc-on-call.
5. Getting bribed super-extra because of the occasion and the urgency of the law-breaker to go on, if you are a traffic cop.
6. Watching TV shows where others are celebrating New Year’s is like watching others eat a gourmet dinner and burping vicariously at the sight. Surely, a loser’s gambit.
7. Romantically catching up with one’s partner in a car park, and providing lip service to commitment, something that always seems to open up a woman’s cross-legged position. Correction: I am informed that this is not the norm anymore. It seems the word ‘commitment’ causes the crossing of legs and eyes these days, and Natural Selection (and Unnatural Erection) is preferred to parental trial and error in the gambler’s market of choosing a partner.
8. Partying-hopping: where it is fashionable to keep making the host feel as if he is a modern low-life you have elevated to socially acceptable form by coming. You know, when the guest comes in late, holds a drink and says ‘Hellooo‘ to a variety of animals in pants, before looking at the watch and saying, “I am sorry, but I have to rush. I have four other parties to go to!”
9. Earning in crores, if you were Bipasha Basu, or similar. But then, she is not an unsung character, not after ‘Beedi Jalailay’ (an item song: download here).
10. Reporting drunk for duty and trying to escape scrutiny, if you were an Indian pilot.

Clearly, ‘HNY’ is like the world’s menstrual cycle, only annual. Why don’t people realise that? Simple: marketing and media, the twins responsible for 24% of the follies committed by modern man (the other 76% is due to politicians, environmentalists and cricket fans). Without them, New Year’s Celebrations would be as damp as Paris Hilton’s underpants (when she chooses to wear ’em). And as unworthy of mention as a fall in the Dow Jones’ Index or the once-almighty Dollar.
Every year-end, I get this feeling of ‘let’s go here’, or ‘let’s go there’ for the ultimate party and, every year, I end up going nowhere. On the occasions that I have managed to go to some party or the other, I have ended up feeling better off elsewhere: “anything but this“.
This year end, I did not trouble myself with useless choice. I behaved like a nun. I went into my habit of sleeping over a problem.
How did you spend New Year’s Eve?