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CRANK'S CORNER

        You can put it down to extreme cold or the unending spirited revelry of the season in which, for some, the night begins when the birds set out for food. Otherwise there is no earthly reason why normally sensible and serious people take resolutions, which they know they can't manage to live up to even as long as a Ramarajan release did in his last days as actor. 'I will quit smoking,' a man, who just the other day put to shame a steam engine, will proudly declaim. Doubtless the smoke on the bhogi morning will be laced with the cathartic puffs from such desperate souls. A lot of people may have successfully given up smoking cigarettes, but there is no recorded history of anyone deciding to quit on a New Year day and remaining steadfast since then. If there is one then Yeti is a real creature of life or Dayanidhi Maran is a Minister in Delhi.

        Some people also vow to write a diary. On stupidity stakes, this comes close to girls going to bed, hugging a teddy bear (these are the ones who eventually grow up to divorce their hubbies for being grizzly and hirsute). I am still to come across one acceptable sane reason for putting to pen your every day events in a bound notebook. Obviously, you wouldn't want others to read your personal diary. If you wanted then you would be thirsting to write this column. Then, by definition, if a writer is going to be the sole reader of what is written, then why write? The real beauty of memory is when it is in the mind.

        Yet, diaries continue to be the most sought-after gift during the New Year time. And with Deepavali crackers losing their bang, Sivakasi almost owes its existence to this unexplained (actually inexplicable) fetish of homo sapiens for diaries. I suspect more diaries are printed than there are literate human beings in this world. So where do all of them end up? Luckily to children, who practise their aimless scribbling. Just imagine a world without diaries. Well, our children's handwriting would be illegible. I have a friend who, come December, makes a prompt indent for a diary with me. He is certainly no man of letters. He also doesn't have a child who will happily doodle on it. So what does he do with that diary? One day the truth came around to me in the most unexpected manner possible. Apparently he had been asking for a diary because somebody else asked for one from him. And why did that man want it? Naturally to gift it to someone else. The chain went on in a more complicated and confusing manner than Amway marketing can ever be, and eventually the diary ended back with me as a gift from another acquaintance. It must have been an eventful journey for a humble diary, but by the end of it all it must have been wiser with the knowledge that the world is indeed round.

        Another gross kink of modern-day living is to dance and drink all night on new year eve and wake up on the afternoon of new year day as if the rest of humanity had danced on you. In fact some people get so spirited that they endure a hangover that lasts till the next year's party. It is not without reason that most consumer durable companies have their mega clearance sale around New Year time. It is when most of the population is not even in a position to distinguish between a washing machine and the sales girl selling it.

        After the seemingly never-ending wining and dining, overcome by heavy guilt, many individuals are also known to take a resolution that they will diet and exercise regularly. This is perhaps the best joke ever to have been made with a serious mind. The world is increasingly bent upon (literally in many cases) to look slim. Fashion norms state that women should look thinner than the lipstick they use. Men are also decreed to look flat as if they have spent their lifetime under an iron box. So in this fit of fitness mania, men and women starve themselves to death and try to lift weights that even Hercules would have called the porter for help. My gut feeling is that the majority go through this imposed famine for eleven months and gluttonise compensatingly in December that everything evens out eventually.

        Why can't people take the birth of the new year to be just the day when you replace the old calendar with a new one? I can't also figure out this burning urge to call up all the near and dear at the stroke of midnight to wish them a Happy New Year. Would the new year be something else if you are greeted in the morning. Why this unseemly hurry? I don't know. But I am not ready to take chances, and that is why I wish you a happy and humorous new year now itself.