Comment

It’s late in the evening as I sit down to write this column, just a few hours before an ominous midnight. For, not only is tomorrow the start of another day but the beginning of another year. I sense a different feeling in the air. It’s not just the dense fog that had all us Delhiwallahs seemingly suspended, like so many particles, in a grisly mist — splashing hues of grey across our lives. Losing, as it were, all sense of what is below and what is above, what is far and what is near.

The fog has lifted today and promises not to shroud us tomorrow. But that does not dispel the sense of disquiet that prevails. You see it on the faces of people, in the pauses between the bubbly babble — the brave front that many of us put on when the ground beneath shifts. You read it in the SMSes and emails sent en masse wishing you a happy new year. The word “safe” has crept in — as if to be safe (alive and unwounded I suppose) is reason enough to be happy. Safe and peaceful, those are the two words that now pop up in greetings.

Funny, even your iffy friends or those lost in the mists of time suddenly remember you after a long interlude. People want to reconnect, do a back-trot to simpler, less orchestrated times, when chat and chai were the order of the day. A time when friendship could be taken for granted. And time itself flowed like a meandering river and not like a torrent, hurtling you from one appointment to another.

This morning while I did my round of wishing people (I shrink from those “send all” type of missives) I asked my friends how they were going to ring in 2009. Almost all of them planned to stay home. A friend who can be quite a party animal said that she was going to get into bed with a favourite book and a long drink.

Interestingly, a large number wanted to spend the evening with family and close friends. Family had suddenly regained its place in the hierarchy of relationships. It wasn’t just my friends or kin. In the radio chat shows callers said that they wanted to stay at home and be with their children or parents.

No, it was not just 26/11. Undoubtedly, what happened in Mumbai is still sending shudders down the spine of the nation. But what happened in November was the last straw — one more in the sequence of terrorist attacks and catastrophes that seem to be occurring with greater frequency. Economic recession is obviously a mood-changer as well.

Perhaps, this last onslaught has brought home the randomness of life, shown up the fragility of our certainties and blown way our webs of illusion. Our Lakshman rekhas have been rendered impotent.

I am quite certain that New Year’s resolutions this time round will be quite different, more reflective and more inward-looking. The usual suspects — I must lose weight, I must give up smoking, drinking, whatever, I must work harder, I must make more money — may be lower down on the list of must-dos. Supplanted, perhaps, by: I must spend more time with my children, I must look after my parents, I must value each moment: you never know when the last will be. Or, I must do what I’ve always wanted to do but always put off.

The word “home” became ubiquitous in media reports after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. People expressed the fear that they no longer felt safe in their own homes: most blamed the government, and their incipient fears. Alas, terror finds its way into the most barricaded of homes.I, too, spent New Year’s Eve with family, including a delightfully insouciant grand-niece.

Normally ebullient, the barely seven-year-old, was unusually reticent. Traumatised by what happened in Mumbai (she had sat glued to the television with her parents during those fateful days) she saw potential terrorists everywhere. Why, she wondered, did shopkeepers allow people to leave their large bags at the entrance? What if somebody left a bomb, she worried.

She has now figured out how to get answers to her questions. She googles Mumbai blasts and up pop all the headlines. And so, she continues to worry.