A Resolution Revolution

“Many people look forward to the New Year for a new start on old habits”

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It takes a lot of time and effort to get the timing right. The New year seems to have managed it exceptionally well this year, what with New Year’s Eve falling on a Saturday which seems entirely appropriate. In addition, people (those of blessed short memory) have forgotten the virus which was a-lurking until last year and are thus set to give an entirely new meaning to the word ‘merry-making’ before you can say Ho-Ho-Ho! If the one hundred and fifty thousand drinking permits issued in the rather strait-laced city of Pune are anything to go by, I shudder to think of the situation in Delhi and Namma Bengaluru! Surely, the roads and alleys are going to be awash in the good stuff as far as the eye can see. People in the streets, wheeling and dealing and then some good old homeward reeling! Promises to be great fun.

New beginnings mean new innings, another chance to set out and achieve all that you meant to. Thus, the New Year fills me with a new found piety. Resolutely planning to turn over a new leaf and becoming the best version of myself, I plan to develop a will of iron, firmly turning my back on all that appears even faintly illicit. A cleansed person is what I resolve to become. To conveniently forget my little trysts with cleansing anything, myself included and the grief that inevitably follows in its wake. If a great Greek hero like Hercules was reduced to tears, having had to divert an entire river to cleanse the Augean stables, well to quote a Hindi saying, yours truly is a mere ‘kis khet ki muli’.

 My list of great resolutions goes something like this:

1. Learn to wake up with the sun (in true Mumbai spirit, overtake the sun if possible)
2. Eat healthy (nibble on salad leaves, fruit and the like. Don’t even think of Vada Pav)
3. LOSE THE FLAB! (at least five kilograms in a month, I know I am being more idealistic than realistic)
4. Be more assertive (read DO NOT let the spouse and offspring walk all over you)
5.  Learn a new skill (wearing properly coordinated clothes is an important life -skill in my case)

And so on and so forth. The list of resolutions grows like Hydra heads. Chop one off and two more immediately sprout in its place.

And so, I await the New Year with much eagerness, armed to the teeth with my lists of resolutions and even a list of the lists. That I will soon be fighting a losing battle is the furthest thing from my mind, even though I have as much ‘exprience’ in this as Meenamma had in running away from home in the singularly popular ‘Chennai Express’. And so, I ring in the new with much gusto, already half-way to turning over a new leaf.

A happy week of cleansing and detoxing (which any bride-to-be would be proud to emulate before her big day) follows. The night-watchman has the pleasure of seeing me jog out of the gate at 5.30am on the dot for the first couple of days. The 5.30am gradually starts veering towards 5.45 and then 6am and the jog slows to a walk and a final crawl, until about ten days I am greeted with a “Do din se aap dikhe nahin, Madamji? Beemar ho gaye kya jaldi uth ke?” when he is about to go off duty at eight in the morning. I rub my still bleary eyes, mumble something about the offspring having an early class and vanish before he thinks of a closer cross-examination. That my arm involuntarily springs out from between the sheets at least ten times to hit snooze every ten minutes is a state secret which must never be divulged. Early January in Mumbai is a time when you are not driven out of bed because you are sweating profusely and I am determined to make the most of it.

“Do not despair” is my motto for the year. I decide that a single resolution falling by the wayside is nothing to get all hot and bothered about. Four others are awaiting to test my mettle. The healthy eating brings a howl of protest from the help, “Didi, how much salad must I chop every day? I am working overtime at your place!” The unspoken threat of claiming said overtime hangs in the air. The offspring and the spouse are vying with each other to develop new looks of deep disgust at the boiled-steamed- raw fare which is dished up in the new year, until they lose all semblance of patience and refuse to sit down at the table if a single salad sans dressing is spotted anywhere within a radius of one kilometer. I spend longer and longer hours in the kitchen soothing frayed tempers with delectable dishes, while my frayed nerves gradually get the better of me. On the day the help marches in waving her resignation under my nose, I crumble before you can say “Oh, Crumbs”, and samosa and fried fish are reinstated to power after the brief sojourn of salad and fruit.

Now that the first two resolutions have followed the divine decree of “Dust we are and unto dust we return”, the six-hundred and fifty grams of weight which I had so proudly lost promptly decides to reinvade and reclaim lost territory. Methinks Modiji should take a lesson from the lard and reclaim PoK pronto. He is sure to meet with unmitigated success. Perhaps if it is not too late to worm my way into the Padma Awardees list, I am ready to forward this suggestion to the PMO in the hopes of getting a stray one, but no joy. Giving the weighing scale a wide berth, I sadly fold up the whole new wardrobe which I had so proudly purchased and slip back into the old loose clothes who welcome me with open arms like the friends in need that they are.

Now desperate to make up lost ground, my meek self suddenly turns assertive and begins (or at least tries) to order first the offspring and then the spouse hither, tither and yon to do my bidding, both big and small. Seeing me abjectly disappointed by the short duration of my other resolutions, the offspring initially gives in with good grace because she is a sensitive little soul. The spouse in the meanwhile looks attentive, nods his head vigorously and makes himself scarce only to reappear at some unearthly hour when I have fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion, unable to bark out orders like a field marshal or check whether he has carried out the ones issued earlier, to the letter. Barking dogs, however are known for their inability to bite and after about a week, my new assertiveness has grown old, the spouse has started showing up early and both, he and the offspring have started treating me to the familiar eyeroll and “Let us humor the lady” attitude. In response, I rollover and play dead as usual. I think the Indian Cricket Team learnt how to give a ‘walkover’ at my knee. With assertiveness dead and buried, peace reigns over the household for some time.

When I walk into the offspring’s room with my new found skill of color coordinated dressing, I am treated to the kind of explosion which was heard by the good citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki upon the advent of the atomic bomb. Only, in my case, it is the offspring doubled over and ROFLing (roll on floor laughing for the uninitiated) at the sight of me. “Where is my mom and what have you done with her?”, is the overwhelming question. I decide that wisdom lies in not waiting to find out the spouse’s opinion on my new found fashion sense and am back in what I usually wear before you can say ‘fashion statement’. I am only thankful that I did NOT take the hairdresser’s advice and weave a single strand of gold dye through my hair which she had so confidently marketed as ‘fetching’. I shudder to think of what he would have fetched if he’d seen me in my new colorful ‘avatar’: a straitjacket.

I manage to wallow in self-pity for some time at the extremely short duration for which my resolutions seem to last. A weak mind, a weak will, call it what you will, I am moody and sulky like a bear with a sore head for the next couple of days. No amount of reminding myself about the length for which the French and Russian revolutions lasted until they could cause even an iota of change can better my ‘ray of sunshine’ disposition. That is until a friend comes visiting bearing not just glad tidings but a large box of Biryani.

With a song on my lips and biryani on the brain, I resolve that the Resolution Revolution will live to see another day……next year!