One of the many quirks of living in a country as multi-cultural in India is how many times you feel you’re starting a new year.
First that springs to mind, of course, is the day (and its eve) beset by scams in the name of gala dinners. A time to increasingly reflect on how much quicker the last 365-and-some days appear to have passed, compared to the previous 8760-and-some hours. Also increasingly, a time to either enjoy a well-planned holiday or one to make resolution #1: think about where to spend the next New Year’s Eve, ideally months in advance, lest you find yourself with other fools at a scandalously expensive gala dinner.
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If you’re from a state or culture in India where celebrations tied to harvest festivals or the spring equinox herald a new year, mid-April tends to be when you make stale puns like ‘Vishu a happy new year!’. Or you’re not an annoying person and you just say Happy Gudi Padva/ Poila Baishakh/ Bihu/ <enter your festival here, or in the comments - engagement farming FTW!>.
Invariably, traditions around these festivals involve reflection on seasons gone by, too: our parents fed us Ugadi pacchadi, this mixture of 6 different tastes to represent all that a year could carry - sweet and bitter, sour and spicy, salty and pungent. Every year you hoped for less bitter - and also along that way, developed a weird love for umami that most vegetarian friends struggle with.
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It’s common to venerate friendships forged in crucibles of shared hardships - the ones with you during a bad breakup, a failed exam, or even that time you accidentally knocked over the perfect glass of mango shake after just one sip. The harder the tragedy, the stronger the friendship they say - but hardhips aren’t the only type of binding material around.
There’s friendships nurtured in everyday rituals like the bus ride back from school or the 8-10 dreary hours spent in cubicles next to each other. Sometimes, friendships just last as they coincide with happier days, the kind which make you wonder how ever you came across the word ‘halcyon’.
And then there’s that one dude whose birthday lies a few days apart from yours, and your relationship endures purely on that idiosyncrasy of memory. There are a few friends with whom I chat only about twice a year - once on my birthday, once on theirs. Whole chats that stretch for years on as ‘Happy birthday’ ‘Happy birthday to you, too!’
The cement of calendar coincidences is somehow as resilient as that of calamities and cornballs. And at the end of a birthday, in those chats, you very quickly see another year pass by, reflect on its shortness, and wonder what the next one would bring.
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Look, you’ve gotten the point of these section dividers by now, so I’m just gonna add very quickly here - I have a fair number of friends who celebrate Diwali as the start of a new financial year or something. You do you, you guys.
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It’s only human to look back: learn from mistakes, yearn for old glories, and mourn what’s lost. And even more human, in the face of ever-growing uncertainty, to wish for a better future. So I do it on the first of January, in mid-April, and on my birthday in July. Nah, not on Diwali, not that money-minded. But I do have one more month to do this look-back-and-forward.
Every August. Increasingly desperately since the last 11 Augusts, where my beloved Manchester United have offered, let’s say, more expensive gala dinners than cheaper, memorable holidays (yup, talking transfers here). More bitter in the Ugadi pacchadi than sweet.
But that doesn’t stop you from looking back fondly at even the good parts of the year gone past: definitely remember telling friends how excited I was that the second leg of the Europa League quarterfinal ended in extra-time. Now that we had no penalties, I could sleep earlier. But the adrenaline of those late, late goals meant I stayed up till 4:30 am anyway.
And you look forward to the year to come, too - new signings, new jerseys, new puns to think up with involving those new signings for your Fantasy League team. All very exciting.
It’s that time again, friends - happy new Premier League season! UTFR! :)
