SPECTRUM VOICE: Jan 1, 2011

Around this time every year a chunk of overwrought Homo Sapiens, make it a point to look back (in anger?) at the rotten residuum of their past eccentricities. New Year's Eve of late has transmogrified to a day when skeletons of the past years are exhumed, and you know what that means! People run for their desks and pencil down their to-do lists of things which will act as their salvation in the upcoming New Year. Hence, whole lists of resolutions are platted out with the intention of reinventing oneself and giving oneself another chance in the upcoming year. But keeping up with the resolutions has proved to be as difficult as keeping up with the Kardashians, for though written with the best of intentions, we slowly and steadily always manage to find out ways to break these promises to self. Not civil, you may say, and I agree in total with you. But think of resolutions as our nasty parents judging us with their censorious and austere looks; when faced with eyes like that, baby, you chuck it and run for your lives. Take it or leave it resolution lists are a bit elaborate, and without a doubt, stuff that are easy to make but difficult, if not impossible, to follow. Then why on earth do we make them, you ask? Because we very well want us to be better, nobler, finer individuals, and this wish becomes strong and overwhelming around the time of the bottom of the year thereby inducing us to create lists of worthwhile resolutions.

This year I have managed to curve on the imaginary stone a random list of resolutions I have promised myself to keep by hook or by crook. Having undergone a pitiless self-scrutiny, I have realized that my life needs order. More often than not I have felt myself suffer from the lack of appreciation of routines. I hate monotony, and the fact that monotony on a daily scale is otherwise referred to as routine, gives me the pip. A daily order is just what the physician would prescribe, provided I visit a physician with my problem, that is, still routine is what I need. A well laid out daily time table with strict headlines from the start of the day till I head for the dreamless is getting the first spot in my resolution list. The requirement for getting up early, writing for one whole hour everyday, eating a proper breakfast, and generally speaking living a wholesome life are things the first resolution entails.

Trailing behind this painful ruling is another death-trap, a sordid resolution: spend less time on Facebook, Orkut, and less money on Amazon. I am sure I have spent a fortune on the aforementioned three, and sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder if the new cool features on Amazon are the result of the capital I gladly transferred into their trouser pockets. Books uplift your mind; they are frigates that take you faraway, and they cost money! What can you do? Even mental fortification comes with a crispy dollar sign. And now, a word or two about Facebook, Orkut and other such rotten devices of distraction, Let me tell you something, dear friends, there is no better way to while away your time than social networking. The people who created them are geniuses of the first order. The websites are addictive, and even though you know very well that you care a rat about your friend’s notification and her change of status, you can’t help but have a peek. And one peek leads to another, and before you know it there you are skimming through the notification list or playing games, and generally speaking, polluting the virtual world with our own webtrash. I often feel that social-networking is like indulging in a decadent dessert; for although a medium dose of three teaspoon is the recommended intake, we tend to gorge in the entire the plate and hope for more. Well, I am about to give up my gluttonous web-apetite and head to the prospective life improvement forum, if you know what I mean. This is going to be very tough, I hear myself say. Let’s see how long you can put up with this nonsense says my skeptic meta-voice.

The year of 2010, you would doubtless agree, had been a year which required us to defenestrate our prejudices and welcome a new tech-savvy life. In the last year we have seen innovations that even five years ago have been looked at as stuff of the dreams. After the rocking success of 3D, the i-Pad, etc, you cannot anymore ignore the importance of technology in our lives. This year I am making it a point to be tech-savvy and learn more about the marvels of scientific innovation and technology. I am amazed by the excogitations in the scientific world. Who would have thought that space travel could be a possibility? Or that one day we could chat with our distant world-neighbor residing on the other side of the face of the world via a computer! I mean, take it or leave it, technology is a booming new tradition, and I cannot allow myself to be a misoneist anymore. In the past I have often craved for a reboot of the vintage style, a time-travel back to that sepia-toned old-age life of retrograded prosperity. The above idea frequently haunted me after I had caught sight of Snookie and her gang romping in their debauched television series Jersey Shore. The very sight of Snookie, and the innumerable do-nothing housewives, always made me wish to run to the other end of the life quarter. I heard they thought of dropping Snookie last night in place of the crystal ball at the Times Square New Year bash. But alas, we weren’t that lucky!

The most important resolution in my list has to be my fourth resolution: read more books. I have always considered myself an avid reader and generally find myself curled up with a good hardback or paperback before heading for the dreamless. But I realize that more hours of reading is what I require. I still have an unfinished Updike volume incubating on my bookshelf. You know what's funny, every time I pick up that collection of essays, and another book of words, I break the record for the most yawns in a minute. I mean I literally doze off. Not that Updike is uninteresting or anything or the words totally unrelated to modern life, it is just that those two tomes have proven to be highly somniferous for no apparent reason. And like them, I have a ton of others, including some travel treatises, a collection of Dostoevsky, which I have thankfully half-finished, and Tolstoy's War and Peace that must be read this year, provided I could keep myself awake.

In the personal quarter my year of 2010 has proved to be positively incandescent. I have had developed worthwhile relations with people of the same mental setup. This year I am thinking of broadening the social horizon. This is my fifth and final resolution. Getting to know people is what I think the call of the day. Give up sofalizing and bring in the good old spirit of hospice. Of course, a certain tact and diplomacy is called for when you are spreading your social wings, but I guess that last year has taught me some cool people handling tricks. I wish to exercise them.

With the incomprehensive list of promises at hand I take my first step toward this New Year. 2011 and all its possibilities for better of for worse stare at me with an unblinking gaze, and I propose to walk on, holding my head high, my hand proudly displaying my wonder list of resolutions--my salvation that might help me survive in this topsy-turvy ride of existence in a modern era. My computer smiles at me tenderly. I haven’t touched the damned social-networking pages more than once since this morning. A voice inside me, a soft lingering tone, and what this lingering tone is telling me is that I might have a new update on Facebook. One click would take me there; just a click, isn’t that wonderful? One click won't harm me, will it? Just this one time perhaps…hmm… I wonder what it is that is waiting for me on Facebook! Oh, dash it! Resolutions suck. Boo….