The Years in Our Lives

The Years in Our Lives

Barely does a calendar year draw to a close with hordes of slightly tipsy screaming people welcoming in the new one, that its claims to fame are rudely overridden.

Just as everyone is getting used to scribbling 2010 as the New Year, Pranab Mukherjee announces the new budget. Uproar follows with the headlines splaying the new budget across pages 1 and 6 while the poor, “Now Old” calendar year is restricted to a superscript in font size 4.

As our teeming population ranging from suicidal farmers to homicidal techies struggles to come to terms with the latest ‘Aloo’ prices, a new disease hits them out of the blue.

Armed with a virtual cornucopia of defences, the academic year is here. As tech savvy teens move into ‘Suicide Mode’ and dive into waters infested with Archimedes, Calculus and other such menaces, parents primarily mothers are hit hard by this disease.

“Mummy, Chai...” tea, coffee and maybe even Red Bull resonate from the troubled teen’s room. And Mommy Dearest, her Hawaii chappals flapping climbs out of bed, down the stairs and up in repetitive sequences.

Amidst all this, other less ambitious years announce themselves buried among the news; that this year will be a Solar Year or a Lunar Year or the yea1r with the last solar eclipse.

Observing all this, I am reminded of an eminent person’s words – “It’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.”

Or is it the other way around?? Somehow I can’t seem to be remember....

 By Vivek