Happy New Year

Before one can even previse about all the goodness and joy and mirth that 2007 is expected to bring, we are already two days into the newborn year. My friends in New York stood at the Times Square – in freezing temps -- to witness the sparkling Waterford Crystal New Year's Eve ball make its descend. At 11:59 pm, for the last 100 years, for each single year the ball is lowered. It appears beautiful – as millions of voices unite to count down the final seconds of the year, and celebrate the beginning of a new year full of hopes, challenges, changes and dreams.

I believe the New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights. We are effusive, perky and exultant on the New Years. At the advent of 2007, I was sipping exotic Russian green tea, chatting with my charmed inner circle – my pals. It didn’t feel anything, to be honest, yet I was immensely conscious that we are entering a brand new year!

Two days into 2007, I can’t schemer –- that’s a cute word, and that sounds like me –- the events of 2006. Humans are not almanacs that chronicle dates and days. However, I do remember beautiful moments I spend during my Kashmir holidays. I recall one of my best buddies got married. I recount how I nearly missed death in a freaky car-crash. I recollect how you just think of those you love when you see death that closely. I must confess, I fell in love again and again in the year bygone and interestingly – with the same thought, same feeling, and same set of eyes!

A happy New Year! Grant that I
May bring no tear to any eye
When this New Year in time shall end
Let it be said I've played the friend,
Have lived and loved and labored here,
And made of it a happy year.

God bless.

sameer