New Year's tidings

‘… and the new sun rose, bringing the New Year’.

So it’s a new year again. I try to make fresh new beginnings every time, and this new year seems to augur well, after the annus horribilis that is now nine days behind me.

I have decided not to compromise my essential self any longer for anybody’s sake. I have rediscovered that love, though it may be unsatisfactory or passing, is not always and necessarily a chimera, and I am looking forward to some good things happening in my life again. Which I shall notify my readers about, as and when they materialize: watch this space. I am not poor, I am not ill, I am not devoid of a sense of purpose, my classes are full, and insofar as a man can ever be happy, I am happy. Not a small thing to be, as I should know. No man or woman will be allowed to rob me of this happiness: that is my single New Year’s Resolution. For too long have I tried to live for other people. It doesn’t work, and that was the mistake I had been making for a long, long time.

I said in the last post that I want my most serious readers to explore some of my old posts, and comment on them. I am waiting. No better way of showing you are interested in me than in engaging me in conversation about things that interest me. Conversely, I have no better way of finding out who is really interested and who is faking it.

My daughter got a smartphone recently. She might write about her own experience herself, but watching her using it, I now know more certainly than ever that I am not going to need one in the near future. How the world is filling up with useless trifles… it makes me wonder how Shakespeare wrote all those plays without the aid of a ballpoint pen, leave alone a word processor, and how Newton discovered all that he did without even a calculator at his elbow. Shall I live long enough to see a world filled with hairy apes again?

The coldest part of the year is rapidly passing by, and I am sorry to see that it never became really cold in these parts this time. Especially considering that other parts of the world are being swept by once in a decade snowstorms. How capricious Mother Nature is, really.

I have gotten back to books with a vengeance. And also decided not to talk about them except with people who are capable of reading and thinking, by my standards.

A woman friend of mine runs a playschool for very small children in my neighbourhood. My daughter went there too, 15 years ago. I met her at her doorstep one morning recently, and struck her speechless by offering to come and teach her classes in a few years’ time.

Arvind Kejriwal has gone remarkably quiet on the question of ‘doing away with corruption’ within days of assuming office as chief minister of Delhi. I was wondering what he is up to.

That’s enough by way of an update. Have a happy New Year. And old boys, do look me up if you are around: I have a light workload till mid-February.