Happy New Year

Ferris wheels and tora-toras and breathtaking views and standing on cliff edges(threatening to throw each other off, your's truly being the most freaked, i must admit) and horse-riding and parasailing and icecream and strawberries and stars doing spectacular fireworks in the firmament and long walks into nowhere and sunny days and chilly nights and mountain-climbing and swings and whizzing across 12 feet high ropes on sliding pulleys, (fully aware that one mistake and we might just lose a limb) and midnight drives to the lake and travelling by rickety ST buses and baby carrots and paneer pakodas and shopping for kolhapuri chappals and sneaking out in the middle of the night to try and gate crash into Aamir Khan's party, then suddenly sensing danger on the secluded streets and hurrying back to hotel and.......and freedom.

This was my 2 day run-up to the new year. And in what did it culminate? With people closest to me outside my family, around a blazing camp-fire on a bitterly cold night in a secluded spot somewhere between Panchgani and Mahabeleshwar, devouring strawberries and cream, talikng about the past year and its hopes and dreams and reflections and prophesies, fulfilled or otherwise (ok ok, and also cracking silly jokes and passing judgmental comments on smokers, lechers and other people we didn't particularly like :p)

"Aching joys and dizzy raptures."

NOW does everybody agree that I lead a charmed life?

Happy 2006.

And this i mean literally. I have a little new year challenge for all those who read this post. First, recognise a negative emotion within you one that has been chronic (we all have chronic negative emotions, btw). It may be fear, it may be anger, it may be denial, it may be cynicism, guilt, anything. Now turn this emotion/trait/habit on its head. Try and be the exact opposite for one week. Just one week. For just 7 days, consciously try somehow to be the exact opposite of what has plagued you. And if there is no particular emotion you can pinpoint, then just be happy. Owe it to someone to be happy. Be happy. In joy. No matter what. One week. And if that then doesn't rosify at least the rest of the month, then scoff at the aforementioned "run-of- the mill, functional" greeting.

And today the song stuck in my head has been happy new year by ABBA. For all those in doubt, just ask SOD or all the passengers in the 126 i took home from college. It is an old song, written obviously in 1979. One of the things that intrigues me about it is the anticipation of the end of the next decade, i.e. 1989, as is mentioned in the 3rd verse. Feels sorta fuzzily amusing to somebody singing or listening to the song in 2006!

"Happy New Year"

No more champagne

And the fireworks are through

Here we are, me and you

Feeling lost and feeling blue

It's the end of the party

And the morning seems so grey

So unlike yesterday

Now's the time for us to say...

Happy new year

Happy new year

May we all have a vision now and then

Of a world where every neighbour is a friend

Happy new year

Happy new year

May we all have our hopes, our will to try

If we don't we might as well lay down and die

You and I

Sometimes I see

How the brave new world arrives

And I see how it thrives

In the ashes of our lives

Oh yes, man is a fool

And he thinks he'll be okay

Dragging on, feet of clay

Never knowing he's astray

Keeps on going anyway...

Happy new year

Happy new year

May we all have a vision now and then

Of a world where every neighbour is a friend

Happy new year

Happy new year

May we all have our hopes, our will to try

If we don't we might as well lay down and die

You and I

Seems to me now

That the dreams we had before

Are all dead, nothing more

Than confetti on the floor

It's the end of a decade

In another ten years time

Who can say what we'll find

What lies waiting down the line

In the end of eighty-nine...

Happy new year

Happy new year

May we all have a vision now and then

Of a world where every neighbour is a friend

Happy new yearHappy new year

May we all have our hopes, our will to try

If we don't we might as well lay down and die

You and I