This year, let's keep an open heart

If the start of the year is a portent to what lies ahead, I’d like to believe the clear blue skies and the clean air we’re breathing in small-town Bikaner, with water so sweet you feel obliged to have glassfuls even though it’s cold, is possible in Delhi. The winter sun — something rare in the smog-choked capital — is the perfect antidote to big city stresses and tensions, and its warmth is soporific, making one nostalgic about afternoon siestas and a slower pace of life. And one is left wondering whether those who have the good fortune of such quiet lives deserve it nearly as much as we — occasional, migratory visitors — do?

On the other hand, one can only hope the year won’t go the way it began for us in the city, with Sarla falling out of the car, having had too much champagne and wanting to purge herself of its evidence by the roadside. Major calamity was averted — no broken teeth or limbs — though she has bruises over her face, and both clothes and car interiors required immediate cleaning. What the driver thought of his memsahib behaving like the hoi polloi is best left unsaid. 

Cousins and kin get routinely drunk in Bikaner too, as elsewhere, but “living it up” in Delhi has other disadvantages — the polluted air and water aren’t the only hitches, the traffic and long commutes are equally numbing, lending new meaning to the term edgy living. People fly off the handle on the road, acquaintances are increasingly mugged on the streets, vehicles routinely get hijacked, so we’re forced to embark from home armed with both pollution masks and Tasers. In Bikaner and similar small towns, people walk across to each others’ homes without calling ahead to check if anyone’s home; in Delhi, we spend months, sometimes years, without catching up with those on the fringes of the family. When I was younger, I found being taken for granted intrusive; now that I am older, I am less offended by the invasiveness of the family.

This year began without the usual resolutions. No false undertakings about morning walks — usually given up within a week — or diets that won’t last the day, or assurances to sign up for checkups: all as chimeric as the sun’s rays that, at this time of year, are more notable for their absence than their presence. Where’s the point in promising you won’t spend wastefully any more on clothes, or other rubbish, when there’s a market to serve? But the number one resolution, brought in with a hangover yet just as likely to be broken in the first 24 hours, is the contract not to drink again — ever. If people actually stuck to their resolutions, the world would be a much better place, but also a more boring one.

Instead, our New Year’s Day began with friends who gathered at home for lunch — some who were visiting from overseas, others whom we hadn’t met in a while, still others who dropped in perchance — as convivial a gathering in Delhi as it is rare, where even parties are curated for what one may gain from them. As cynical as that sounds, growing older, one new year at a time, also means letting go of lingering (but forgotten) resentments. So, from sleepy Bikaner, here’s an antidote. This year, and ever more, let’s vow to keep an open house and an open heart. And hope we can drink to that without finding ourselves face down on the road — like Sarla.