But before I get you reading this and leave you thinking what an awful person I must be who always has something horrible to say, be it about the Garden of Dreams or the roads in Nepal, I shall warn you, this article too, is along a similar note. [break]
So if you think I might dampen your spirit for the festivities that follow, then it is best you stop reading here.
New Year is a time for celebration, indeed. It is a time for reflecting back and being grateful for the past year: that you were alive and lived through whatever came your way. It is a time for dancing, singing, rejoicing and merrymaking.
In keeping with this view I have, every year I usually go through the same routine way in which I bid the year goodbye and get ready to welcome another one. Sky-high heels – a must; beautiful new dress – a must; some fancy place where I can dance the night away – another must.
So not surprisingly, my plans for this New Year’s eve started the same way. Browsing through shop after shop, event after event and after much planning with friends and family, I feel I can safely say I had a rough idea of what I would be wearing and where I would be heading tomorrow night.
Like for any woman, all this is a big fuss for me, too. More so because the New Year’s eve is one night in the year where I really like to let go of all calculations and caution and spend like a maniac, if that may not be too strong a word.
But when I got home and emptied my shopping bags, I added up all the expenses I had made: that too, just in a matter of minutes. Let’s just say that I was not happy with how much I had spent.
In fact, this amount suddenly took my memories to sometime back. And this memory has made me think if I really even want to go out tomorrow. It has defied my logic of dancing into a new year for it to be a good and happy one.
I am not saying I will stay home and be miserable; instead, I am saying I will stay home and celebrate.
Let me tell you what memory the bill triggered. I think my dad and I were waiting outside a temple after offering our prayers for some other family. And while we were there, I saw something that moved me very deeply.
I saw a little girl walk up to her dad. “Baba, malai ek rupaiya dinu na,” she asked her dad for one rupee. Only one rupee. And her dad pretended not to have heard her until the little girl finally gave up and walked away, rather sad.
Her dad could not even afford to give her one rupee for her to offer to God. And there I was, having burnt a hole in my pocket, that too, not exactly for some saintly purpose.
There she had been at one end, and there I was on the other. For someone like me, guilt takes no time catching up and I will not deny: I felt miserable.
I don’t know if such things cross your minds too and if you can identify with what I am saying, but I will ask you and urge you to think about this: after all, a new year calls for a new perspective to look at things, it calls for a new note.
I mean, whoever came up with the rule that you absolutely have to buy a new set of clothes for the New Year? And whoever said that the only right way to celebrate a new year was to go to some fancy place and spend a lot of money?
Maybe you are different from me and are more sensible in terms of how you approach your finances. But every time I visit a store, I am only proven otherwise. I don’t want to go pointing, but then there are tons of shops around town that overprice their products insanely.
Even with their Christmas and New Year discounts, these still amount to scary figures. And quite honestly, I don’t think it is right to blame them for overpricing because regardless of the fact that a shirt that looks worth not more than Rs 500 is being sold for Rs 4,000 and yet is still being bought as if it were for free or some kind of coveted prize makes me think if the world is actually that rich or am I just that poor. And it is not even like they are branded or anything.
Yet the pursuit for all things unnecessary seems endless. I don’t understand this obsession with things and how they can have such a gripping effect on you.
When this consumerism hit, and how hard it hit are matters to consider. Like I said, I don’t want to get in the way of your perfect, pre-planned night, but I do want you to think what you are getting out of all this.
When I voice out such concerns, I often have people telling me that I cannot be bothered about such trivial things if I want to move ahead in life. But sometimes it gets me thinking that it is important I think exactly for this reason and keep track of how I’m spending my money and if it is really necessary to spend at all.
And while a Rs 6,000 entrance charge to some five-star property may make me happy for, umm…I don’t know, a few hours, it nowhere near can compare to the happiness the same Rs 6,000 could have brought a homeless orphan for just the same number of hours.
Worse yet is that after a few hours of vanity, neither does the money last, nor the new dress that I lavishly indulged in, nor the high heels, and if ‘drinking’ was involved, then neither does the memory.
All this in no way implies that I am asking you to go and donate your entire holiday budget to some social welfare (unless you want to, of course). But I am wondering if it is time to reform our outlook to the whole concept of “New Year” and realize that it is as special a day as any other day. And this means that there is no need for superfluous spending.
After all, a new year is a time for reform. And it is also a time for the clichéd “new year’s resolutions.” I don’t know if I can confidently say that I believe in such a thing as “new year resolutions” but I do believe that humans can be creatures of change. And if the change is for the better, then definitely so be it.
So on that note, I shall leave you thinking. But with all that having been said, I still wish you a very happy 2012, and remember to spend wisely!
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