Another New Year

Posted on the 02 January 2017 by C. Suresh
Here that dratted thing comes over again, setting off that itch. 2016 is kicked out unceremoniously and 2017 walks insouciantly in. "You may call yourself new, laddie, but so did dear old 2016 some time back", I say and try to laugh off that itch. As though anyone has ever managed to laugh off an itch...any itch.
What is that itch, you ask? As though you have not just been scratching it. The New Year resolution itch, of course. Almost every special day is celebrated in some way or the other - some with crackers, others with colors, almost all with sweets - but whoever thought that making goddamn resolutions was a fit celebration of a special day ought to be lynched. Or, more to the point, those idiots ought to be lynched who listened to the gibbering of an obviously insane person and took it seriously. Just imagine...you have this so-called special day and how do you spend it? In doing something that will store up frustration and shoot up your blood pressure for all the remaining days of the year. If THAT is not crazy, I think someone changed the meaning of 'crazy' in the dictionary while I was not looking.
Yeah! Yeah! I know...YOU are too sane to be making resolutions. Of course you think that I, too, must be insane if I get the itch for doing a thing that I KNOW to be originated in the mind of someone who saw pink elephants perching on trees every time he ventured out of his house. The problem, you see, is that, unlike you, I am a social person and the sheer pressure of answering hour-long critical sessions on why I am NOT making resolutions is just too much for me. Unlike you, I cannot snappily answer, "Because I am sane", and have the whole lot of them ostracizing me.
Thus it is that every year on the year, except the first and the last one, I have been starting the year with, "At least this year, I shall..." By which you know how well I had kept the resolution of the previous year. The reason why I did not start off with that resounding phrase in the first year was only because there had been no previous year wherein I had so resolved and failed to keep the resolution. As for the last year...
I really thought I had the game beat. I resolved last year to just continue what I had been doing the previous year...laze around etc....and I had succeeded signally with my resolution. NOW you may think that I had the winning formula and can consider myself as having conquered the itch. I thought so too, but...
It is itching with the backlog of last year as well. Apparently what I resolved last year does not really count as a resolution within the meaning of the term as defined in the statutes governing New Year resolutions. And so...
"At least this year I shall..."