Arrivederci 2008!

I usually hate goodbyes. I am the quintessential pack rat so to speak, reluctant to let go of people, possessions or memories. But 2008 is different. I am only too glad and ready to bid goodbye to what can now officially be termed as annus horribilus.

This year has been a forecaster’s nightmare but when the year began, I somehow felt change in my bones. “You just watch,” me and my friend concurred over our single malts, “things are gonna be shaken and stirred this year.” We were mostly referring to our jobs, love lives and future plans but even we junior Nostradamuses couldn’t have predicted the extent or impact of our drunken assertions. I guess Obama must’ve been on the same telepathic wave while we were doing our oracles, coz he caught on to the ‘change’ bit and made a global brand out of it as Bush got booted out (quite literally!).

Back home we had some heroes of our own as well, from Abhinav Bindra’s Olympic win to Aravind Adiga’s Booker Prize to Chandrayan heading moonward.  But these glimmers of hope got thoroughly blindsided by 26/11. As numerological conspiracy theories about the number 26 flew thick and fast through mails and SMSes (apparently Godhra, tsunami, Kutch earthquake and Bombay train blasts have all happened on this date), this city’s citizens got rudely and definitively awakened from their slumber of apathy. From picketing to demanding electoral reform to launching an independent political party, Kumbhakarna (or should I say Mumbaikarna?) has been stirred alright.

But only the new year will show if he manages to stay awake and not slip back into his ‘chalta ha’ snooze.

And while the world outside has definitely changed, the world within wasn’t to be left behind as well. The ongoing Almost Great Depression isn’t just a newspaper headline to many of us. First came the financial sector collapse which not only upturned the share market but also the marriage market. As an SMS forward put it cheekily, things are so bad that women are actually marrying for love! Then of course all the rest started falling like ninepins from housing to automobiles to commodities. The swaggering VC/PE types and dealmakers have become an urban legend and the Indian entrepreneur dream is currently caught midstream struggling to find fancy foreign capital that was lining up in droves just 6 months back. ESOPs are too miserable to even pass off as sops in today’s times. And for the first time in my life I actually know someone directly who’s been laid off! That’s not counting myself who’s voluntarily in between jobs waiting to join a slowstartup (I believe that’s what startups have been rechristened as!).

And if the world of money is all topsy-turvy then what can one say about the world of love? Tumultuous by nature, this year has been a smorgasbord of emotions.  Some people bid goodbye to some of their deepest relationships, the blood ties that are supposed to last for life. Otherwise bid goodbye to their first loves (who got engaged to their first loves)! Yet others bid goodbye to closets, confusion and heterosexuality altogether (three cheers to Bombay’s Gay Pride Parade!). But where there were shattering losses, there were also heartwarming unions and reunions. Be it long-lost relatives from an estranged family or college sweethearts finally tying the knot or discovering a great friend in an ex-boyfriend, this has also been the year of finding love hidden quietly in unlikely places.

And as the year ends people across the world are looking up, either to raise a toast in celebrations or a prayer in desperation and question, asking, “God, why us?” But if you ask me, I think the answer doesn’t lie above; it lies below. Far below the earth in fact, somewhere under Europe. Where the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) began trying to simulate the Big Bang Theory. If we’re going to try and recreate Creation itself, we have to be prepared for some fallout now, don’t we?

And I hear they are going to restart the LHC in summer 2009. God save all of us and Happy New Year!