A new year, a new beginning?

The whole world goes ga-ga over the New Year! Nothing new, considering that the developed world always was this way! ... 'n the developing world was fooled into believing that it was a great deal! So there I go into the streets on a freezing new year's day in Bangalore ... everyone out there wishing each other a happy new year! All tolerable till now; and then it comes ... "What's your resolution this year?" I knew this was coming, happens every year! People have their own stupid notions of the new year resolution.

Tipplers, after a heavy boozing spree, resolve to never drink again! Sometimes I wonder if they even remeber what they had decided the previos nite! And then there's the new breed of uncles and auntys who have jumped on to this resolution bandwagon!! These old men and women, who, never in their dreams have even come closely to thinking about what to do with their lives, now decide to get lean, feed the poor ... What a joke! One look at their dogs; and their bellies; and you know how well they will keep their resolution!

And now I meet this drunk buffoon on the road ... he sways so well, he could give the coconut trees on a Goan beach good competition! He comes across to me ... " Say mate, do ya have a smoke? "
"There's too much of it around", I reply; pointing to the firework induced smoke all around! He gives me a look that says that I better keep my wisecracks to myself!!! I move on...

Auto drivers have a field day. Those poor souls who do not have a vehicle of their own wonder if they are paying for reaching their location or buying it! Effect of the booze, they reason out!

Day after > the entire town's dead asleep! Old timers would have reacted in shock if they saw the young uns' fast asleep till evening, and that too on the first day of the year! But this is the new millenium ... a new year, a new beginning .... maybe!!!