A great lot of people regrettably, take New Year’s Eve as a chance to get royally plastered. Which is about the worst way to greet the new year really, because you have to meet something coming head on with a clear, not foggy, mind and your senses all alert. And the first day certainly deserves more than your miserable hangover. When I was this prim and proper schoolgirl in the convent run by the nuns, one thing made a powerful impact on me. When you are young, raw and painfully naive, I suppose just about anything makes an impact on you. But I’ve simply got to share this with you. Every year, the nuns, not all of them together (or the school would disintegrate into anarchy), would disappear from sight. They, we were mysteriously told, were having a retreat. For some time, I am ashamed to say I thought it meant a luxurious vacation at a retreat, probably a Goan heritage hotel, where they sipped pina colada and soaked in the sun. Later, I learnt they actually became recluses, and spent the time in silence, contemplation and prayer. For me, it seemed a novel thing to do and still does. Now, wearied by twenty-four hour television, with their coverage of despicable men like the molester Rathore and the antics of Rakhi Sawant, the incessant chatter of FM channels with their false cheer and exaggerated accents, the deluge of spams an my gmail account, I, too, wish to retreat from this cacophonic, hyperactive world to a silence so perfect, you can hear a leaf falling. For us women, it is most essential to get away to someplace else where nobody can see us. It would be a win win situation for sure. You won’t have to colour or perm or straighten your hair. You won’t have to bother about fashion fiascos, and can combine your track pants with a feather boa without anybody being the wiser for it. You won’t have to eat out your heart out watching the hour glass figures of other females around you, because there, in that isle of silence, there are no humans in sight of any shape or size. In that magic place, you can actually believe you are God’s gift to man. The audacity of hope... though I doubt Barack Obama was referring to this. Was he?

Even otherwise, I believe withdrawing into a retreat is a wonderfully detoxifying thing to do. Just switch off your mobiles, shut down your computers, cancel all meetings and appointments, and get ready to open your inward eye, that eye which shut tight because you were barking orders on the phone, or twittering inanely, or being cowed by a pushy salesman into buying yet another gizmo you don’t need. Just get to know the real you inside yourself. Listen to the self remembering the past, complaining of old hurts, articulating brave new hopes. Give that self the importance it deserves. Because that self is the genuine part of you, that natural part of you that doesn’t really care about your sharp suits and swanky car and cool duplex apartment in the poshest part of town. It only wants you to figure obut what’s important in life, how far you have come, the people you love and are loved in return. It reminds you of your lost childhood, with its evocative smells and remembered faces; your lost youth with its fist bunched bravura wild bike escapades, canteen politics and fevered romance. It helps to cope with the middle-aged self, with its tell-tale crowsfeet, sagging body, defiant children and crippling mortgage. And the best time to go into this retreat, this voyage of self-discovery, is close to the new year, for this is the time you must do an inventory, so that you don’t drag the excess baggage of one year to the next, so that you start with a clean slate, a tabula rasa, so to speak. If more people did this, I think we would have fewer credulous fools rushing off to godmen to handle their woes. We would not have sham astrologers merrily divesting us of our money with fancy gemstones.

How you look back on the past year also tells a lot about the kind of person you are. While someone would remember 2009 for the bandobast of Shilpa Shetty’s celebrity wedding, others would say the election of Barack Obama, the Copenhagen summit, and the presence of ULFA leaders back home were the high points. This columnist consciously avoids all references to Bollywood, but makes an exception in this case. Years ago, in 1988, in the runaway hit Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, Aamir Khan strummed his way into millions of hearts with the song that spoke of Daddy’s hopes that his son would achieve greatness one day. This year, with Aamir Khan astonishingly playing a college kid yet again, there is a sea change. It is not about living upto your Daddy’s dream anymore. Instead, you are speaking out about how Daddy taught you about bribery. You want out. The straitjacket of parental pressure, insurmountable academic goals robs you of your childhood and youth. You want sunshine, you want rain, you want to grow up once again. The disillusionment of today’s youth permeates every frame of this candid film. For Bollywood, always eager to create technicolour escapist illusions, this is certainly an achievement in 2009.

This is the time of the year when journos go to town with a whole lot of lists. Lists about the ten most important political events of the year, the ten most discussed books or films, the ten most powerful men and women... you get the drift. I am a journo, too, but I’m afraid I’m no good at making lists, except the one listing the many times my better half let me down (I’ve run out of paper). Anyway, I am thankful I don’t have to bother making a list, because the category I’m about to mention doesn’t need other names at all. So, the person you felt most sorry for in 2009 is... no prizes for guessing... Tiger Woods.

I mean, what was he thinking? Here he was, with this perfect career, a perfect family, luxurious homes, generous endorsements, a squeaky clean public image and then whoosh! It came down like a house of cards. How do we know if the outraged wife was actually going after him with a golf club, instead of dutifully extricating him from the car? Soon, all his indiscretions were crawling out of the woodwork – fourteen at the last court, and the paparazzi are like little boys in a candy shop. Most of these women, a good lot of them blonde – are fun time gals, who are both easy on the eye and the morals. Elin is, of course, going to take him to the cleaners, her hiring up a hardnosed celebrity divorce lawyer is an ominous sign of things to come. Woods may even lose custody of his kids, not to speak of paying millions in alimony. Accenture and other brands have distanced themselves from him, and his career is on indefinite hold. Woods must be ghunly pondering over the year 2009 as the one that did him in. I think this is enough for any man to be put off by women forever. But I wish to end on a more cheery note. Though Tiger won’t read this (he’ll be too busy poring over the fine print in the divorce papers), I just want to say that all these years I haven’t paid him much attention. Okay, so he was this amazingly successful golfer with a haircut as neat as the golf course he played on. But that was about it. He was too perfect, too goody goody. He made you feel inferior somehow, as if you didn’t give your best shot and he did, literally. Now that his smarmy private life is spread out across the tabloids, he somehow seems more human, simply because he is fallible, and in obvious misery. You feel sorry about the bloke and relieved that you wont be in his hind of mess, at least not on the same scale anyway. There is a lesson in that somewhere, a modern day morality tale, but no one cares much about it as they pick on the more delectable bits.

This then, is the first piece of the year. Like always, it has been an attempt to catch the fleeting moments with no other aim than to amuse and nudge you into a train of thought. Like all of you, I look back on last year with mixed feelings. Some things could have changed. Some should not have. I was no wiser than I was the previous year. But hey, who wants to grow up?

(indrani.raimedhi@gmail.com)

Indrani Raimedhi