New Year Resolutions in the Winter Wonderland

For once, I seem to have had all in all a wonderful fortnight in December 2006. No tension, no worries, just simple bonding with family and enjoying, finally, after four years, just being in India. Although a very different India than the one I grew up in! Which is OK, I don’t complain, at least the bathrooms in Mumbai airport are MUCH nicer than back then. The car- and plane-rides were not fraught with irritation as they usually are, actually managed to play some anthakshari and chat about life during the journeys, imagine that. I think it was because of the weather. Winter in the tropics, as welcome as the spring in New York!

I discovered romance novels. Courtesy my sister who devours them. We tracked down two of such things in her house and I borrowed them. Finished them in a day each, and liked them! Although they have the tendency to be over three hundred pages long and try to weave in a story-line and what not, at the end of the day they have very simple premises, and very predictable, feel-good endings. So girl meets man, lot of tension and seeming hatred. Man is man of the world and has hard exterior with a marshmallow heart. Girl is feisty, young and of course beautiful. At the end they are together and there is a baby and there is love all around and the sun shines brightly on a brilliant new life. After all my years of pseudo-intellectualism here I am publicly stating that I will not knock romance novels any more. At least I will let them contribute to my internal inconsistencies and controversies by reading them alongside Amitav Ghosh

Had a couple of wonderful sessions at the Bharat Kalachar in Chennai – where we attended Carnatic vocal concerts. The seats are simple plastic chairs tied together. The more you pay, the closer you sit. But at Rs. 100 a pop the seats we had were pretty good. The acoustics wonderful for a place that is all open on the sides. It was just awesome to sit down and get lost in the music, it had been a long time since I had managed such a thing. I fully expected the kid to be totally bored and a big pain but to her credit she was broadly fine with the exercise and only seemed to get a big fidgety after two full hours. But glad to report that we hung on, listened till the last note was sung and only then made our way out of the auditorium! Led to my second resolve – to attend in near entirety Chennai Music Season 2007.

Finally back in Amchi Mumbai. The city was going ballistic for New Year’s Eve parties and what not. Bright lights and happy faces all around. Mega parties announced at every corner. Thankfully did not need to get into any of that, spent a relatively quiet night at home and chatted about life. New Years Day being a holiday was a great surprise and spent the day vegetating in front of the Idiot Box (I usually don’t do such things!) and watching pieces of several movies half-heartedly. God! It is horrendous to see the dances, having not seen TV for long stretches of time in so many years I had not realized how obscene the whole thing is. Resolve three – continue to not watch television.

It is great to be back home, although there are clothes peeping out of every corner of the house. The nip in the air is welcome, as is the warm sun. Would have loved more lazy vacationing, but everything has a time and place, and now the time has come to do some work and earn those paychecks. And yes, next stop Mumbai Marathon 2007 on the 21^st of January. More on that later!