Good Day, Ugly Days

It’s December yet again! Icy nights and hot afternoons have dawned. Heralding the birth of a fresh new year, the culmination month of 2014 has started galloping toward a new sunshine. The dying year is already wrapped in the best of costumes and carried to the funeral pyre. The good, the bad and the ugliest of happenings came unto us over the past 12 months. We patted ourselves for being at the centre of it all. We also rued the mishaps that over ran our conscience. We stayed neutral when certain elements posed the threat of hijacking our very lives. And yet we lived on, so that we could stay witness to yet another sunrise.

And, the sunrise is just round the bend. But as we look back, we are sure to recall the highs and the lows that became part of our lives. Looking at the past 12 months through a kaleidoscope, I find myself in a maze of all that’s good and bad. The ugly too walked in unawares once in a while.

So, how do I rate year 2014? It’s been sort of hobby for me to rate the years I have lived through every time the death knell is sounded. It is now time for 2014 to start its final lap. What a year it has indeed been!

2014, unfortunately enough, is the year that forced me to live the life of a citizen ruled over by the men and women I loved to hate. Over the period, I had to be witness to a phenomenon where the color of Indian psyche faded steadily through the year to somewhat saffron. I’m not against the color, as such. But when the hue reveals the tears of my brethren writ large over it, I tend to worry.

I was also witness to a handful of messiahs parroting the phrase achche din aa gaye over the past few months of 2014. Even as I dig deeper, I fail to find one. I keep digging.
On the global arena, and in my conscience, I had to stay muted even as gunshots took the lives of innocent school kids.I curse myself for being part of this planet where even our children are dragged into the ugly quagmire of religion.
Closer home, I saw the people I voted to power go bonkers over wine and women. It was fun watching the circus where people in power totally banked on a couple of not-so-adorable women and a few cases of not-so-vintage wine for their existence. The drama has been entertaining, to say the least. After all, the Kerala tradition has been such that an existence sans wine and women is highly improbable.

On a positive note, I watched from my living room the way my nation took wings to kiss the surface of an alien planet. It gives me immense hope as I ride into a New Year in a short while. On a sadder note, let me also add there wasn't a second instance of a good deed before or after the Mangalyaan adventure. The moral of the story, for me, thus turns out to be this: When you are beaten down in the political, cultural or the financial front and are forced to lie low, look skywards – there could be glimmer of hope blazing through the clouds with a lonely planet out there as destination.

On the personal front, Year 2014 brought to my lap the happiest and saddest moments in quick succession. But then those are personal stories, I’ll keep them to myself. Here’s wishing you all a 2015 where Hope hopefully would help you live on.