Saturday, December 31, 2011

Looking back and ahead

It's 20:25 hours of the last day of 2011. I have just returned after a holiday trip, about which I have written on the other blog. Mother Nature is up to her strange antics again: I left the town much colder than it is now, so that I went away wearing warm woolens, and now I am back and typing in shirtsleeves! In Kolkata people were actually sweating...the weather bureau has been talking about a low pressure belt which has built up over the Bay of Bengal, preventing the usual western cyclonic winds from doing their thing at this time of the year. I do hope that the cold will come back: I was hoping for at least a month more of really chilly weather. 

2011 hasn't been a big deal for me, for good or for bad, but the world has been rocked by all sorts of revolutions and quasi-revolutions and pseudo-revolutions: Osama and Gaddafi killed, Mubarak deposed, Berlusconi removed, Putin and Manmohan Singh tottering, Cameron gibbering and Obama dithering, the likes of Anna Hazare sharing 15-minute-celebrity status with Lady Gaga and Steve Jobs, Dev Anand gone at last but Fidel Castro and Khushwant Singh have cocked a snook at the Great Reaper one more time, and some really far-out freaks almost eagerly looking forward to the end of it all sometime in late 2012. With all that in mind, I shall now go take a walk, then come back home to watch loonies hyperventilating as they gear up to usher in yet another new year. All the best, everybody.

3 comments:

Shilpi said...

Hullo. It's officially the New Year here now. They're blowing up noisy firecrackers, and one of my usually brave cats was hiding under my knees a few moments ago, and is now hiding on the shoe rack (poor thing), and the older and grizzled one has retired under the table after snouting me for some cuddles. It was very quiet earlier on though when I went for a walk (no drunk noisies or anything) and I felt positively warm within some minutes in a sweater and a jacket. I'm quite sure it's the warmest winter that I've seen here. I do hope the winter comes back there though...

The second paragraph made me chuckle a fair bit (apart from Obama "gibbering". He doesn't gibber...although to be honest I haven't heard him apart from early on in the year) among other things (the Hazare bit still manages to give me the chills and some of the rest makes me feel somewhat bemused and even ancient...).

I was waiting for the old year to come to an end before writing here. It was, I think I can now safely say, one of the strangest years for me although very normal on the surface or at least quite, quite staid and normal. Let's see what happens in the new one although I can't quite believe that a whole year has gone by. I don't think this has registered as yet.

All the best to you too. Cheers.

Suvro Chatterjee said...

Yes, okay, thanks: I have made some slight changes in the post after reading your comment.

santanu Chatterjee said...

Forgot some more: Poupendrou crawling while Merkel smiling and Sarkozy stammering. Not your fault. Actually the plight of the "world leaders" could go on.