Twenty-Twelve

What will you be doing at the stroke of midnight tonight? Uncorking a Champagne perhaps, hoping the upcoming year will be as effervescent as the fizzy white bubbles? Or will you be counting it down, like New Yorkers in Times Square, good riddance to a year with more trials and tribulations than you could have imagined while welcoming ‘Happy’ New Year last winter? Or will you set off your box of crackers, to light up the next 365 days, as bright as the Sydney night sky during the year-end festivities? Or, may be, you don’t give two hoots about what you clearly believe is yet another decadent import from the West: Bidesi ko naya barsa manaunu parya chaina!



Whatever you do, we hope the upcoming year will be happy and prosperous for you. There really is no point starting New Year brooding over everything that went wrong in the last. Who knows, this might be the year things turn around for you. It might just be that 2012 is the year for that long-awaited promotion, or the year you land the dream job that guarantees your income keeps up with the rate of inflation (optimal) or when your boss finally realizes that at your current salary level, you cannot get a pair of decent boxers (minimum).



And yes, we hope you can keep all your resolutions. According to the boffins, it is easier to take up a new habit than to break an old one. The best bet then might not be giving up altogether on your cigarettes and Campari (again, not to discourage the determined souls) but adding to your daily life healthier habits while you cut down on the bad ones.



That takes us to…politics, of course. How can an editorial in a Nepali daily be complete without reference of our overlords? Our trusted brothers and sisters who, three years down the peace and constitution road, have, we hear, miraculously managed to come up with a rough draft of the draft of the new statute. The peace process, meanwhile, seems stuck, in the sturdy door hinges of the abode of Dahal, Baidya and co in Parisdanda and the cracks and creeks of the twin Balkhu towers.



Dear Sirs and Madams, we might go out tonight, striving, with a touch of desperation, to drown our sorrows in little green beer bottles, trying to forget, for one night, the never-ending political logjam; the pathetic, polluted roads; the limitless hours of load-shedding; our sorry pays even, but let us assure you, to a man, this time next year, whether our personal problems are taken care of or not, we want peace and constitution and a semblance of security and law and order ensured… Ah, such dreamers we are. But who ever achieved anything without dreams! To all dreamers, then: Happy New Year.

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