When the Calendar Goes to the Dump

With my grandniece - the antique and the latest

When the year ends the old calendar goes to the dump and the new one takes its place. The old has to go and make way for the new. This is the law of nature. The new may not always be better than the old, though.

I have witnessed the death of many old entities in my lifetime. The transistor radio, landline phone, VCR, film camera, Bajaj Chetak scooter (ah, my beloved for 16 years) – that list is endless. My list ended with the Chetak because the nostalgia it brings veils out everything else of the old dispensation. That scooter carried Maggie and me for all those years. It was in excellent condition when my government decided that it should die. The law has its own way, as one of the chief ministers of Kerala used to repeat ad nauseam whenever he faced problems. His solution for all political problems was to sweep them under the legal carpet. There the problems will lie for an infinite period. And the calendar will be dumped inevitably again and again and the problems will be wiped out from the public memory. What an ingenious solution! And some good things like Chetak will go the dumps.

Today Maggie and I went places in a Maruti Alto, the Aam Aadmi Car. Our destination today took us by the school where I studied for five years. And the school was/is 4.5 km from home. “We walked all that way in those days. Rugged village path and barefoot students.” Life was hard in that old dispensation. Maggie too belonged to that same dispensation though she was lucky to have had slippers on her feet.

“How fortunate are today’s students!” We both recollect. Today they go to school wearing shoes and sitting in their parents’ own cars. Porch to portico generation. The old died. Is the new better, however?

“Isn’t it?” I ask Maggie. “Who would want to walk barefoot all that distance now?”

Our conversation moves on to the future. “The future belongs to robots,” I say. “There will be no children. Noone will be interested in that sort of entertainment – bringing up children. There will be robots to take care of everything including looking after the elderly. Just imagine having a robot to keep our lemon tea ready in the morning. To clean up the house and surroundings. To do the gardening. To take us to hospital in case we fall sick in the middle of the night. And to massage our legs in the wee hours of the mornings.”

“But there was some sort of goodness in those days which is not found now,” Maggie feels. She is not ready for robots yet.

I nod my head as I drive our Maruti Alto. “If you nod your head in darkness, nobody will see your assent,” Maggie had once told me. But I tend to forget many things nowadays. All my hairs have grown grey. My skin is gathering wrinkles. I can see the stains on my teeth when I try to smile at myself in the mirror. I look like a scarecrow that is outdated.

Back home after the trip, I look at the calendar on my most private wall. [I don’t disfigure my walls with calendars except the one near the bathroom.] That calendar will soon be dumped. The new one is waiting. Both came free from the parish church. Time is also a free gift to us. All Buddhas would have been happier without that gift. No time means no existence means no sorrows.

I am not a Buddha. So I shall wait for that midnight to dump the old calendar and hang the new one. And then look at the mirror just on the other side of the wall and smile at my silver hairs. And wink at the old ghosts that still haunt my sleeps.

And hope for a better year.

Ahead.

Wish you a Happy New Year.