New Year Resolution

New Year resolutions have always been alien to me. Apart from making some silly resolutions like “I won’t eat Horlicks today when mother is asleep”, or “I will write a letter to Ammoomma and Appooppan every month” when I was around 7 or 8 years old, I can’t quite recollect if I’ve ever made a resolution. Come the end of a year, TV channels start buzzing with celebrities’ New Year Resolutions, how they are going to reduce the length of their costumes further, or how they are going to find their new “love”, or God knows what else!!! I wonder who on earth has time to care for such crap…I don’t.

As far as I can call up memories, all the New Years, save a couple of them have found me slumbering away in a corner of the sofa in our drawing room, the inevitable denouement of waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the hands of the clock to click in unison at midnight!! Isn’t it an irony that whenever you try to keep sleep away, it comes back at you so strongly you get the feeling that never before have you felt so sleepy in your whole life, and when you want to get some sweet sleep after a hectic day, it eludes you like a butterfly that is being chased by a child?? Anyways, this year, it wasn’t to be so. In fact, it seems so wonderful that I greeted 2007, listening to “Humma Humma” from Bombay, created by the one-and-only A R Rahman!!! And I noticed that a new year had dawned only at five minutes past midnight. I was also deeply engrossed in a book at the same time. The book was “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel.

I wasn’t interested in the programs that followed on TV. And I was getting drowsy too. So I folded the book and went to bed. Once I put myself to bed, it was a different story. Just a moment before, I was feeling so lethargic. My eyes were drooping. My head nearly hit the floor from the “Ananthashayanam” posture I was hanging on to while watching the TV. My roommate’s call to get up from the floor and go to bed was responded to only after (I think) at least 5 futile attempts. But what happened now? I knew what it was. It was because I was hungry!!! But there was nothing in the house, apart from 20 litres of Bisleri water. After satisfying my hunger with almost half a litre of water (my first meal of 2007), I again tried to get some sleep.

Getting up early is something I love to practise, but never do. I can remember waking up to Yesudas rendering “Vathapi Ganapathi” in the wee hours of the day when I was a high school student, preparing for his exams. It continued till my Pre-Degree exams. Even when I was a little kid, I loved the idea of waking up early. And I used to, when I visited my grandparents every year during my summer vacation. I would wake up when Ammoomma would come to my bed and call me and ask if I wanted to see the cow being milked. Not a word more was necessary. I loved cows. I would already be near the cow-shed, looking with awe at how milk oozed from the cow’s udder, and listening to the tingling sound produced when milk fell into the stainless steel containers. Shortly, Appooppan would untie the cow from the shed and the calf would start frolicking in the backyard, after having its due share of its mother’s milk. I used to run along with it. The mother cow was pleased to see “two calves” running around, so I thought then.

But once I entered the hallowed campus of REC, now known as NIT, the whole idea of the early bird transformed itself into the night watchman; I mean “night-outs”. Forget about sleeping and getting up at 4/4:30/whenever on the eve of the exam. The question was whether you could afford the luxury of sleeping away 5 or 6 precious hours, which could prove crucial to your future (Placements!!!). All these, thanks to snoring on the last bench for a majority of the class hours and playing “Cows n Bulls” the rest of the time, while I was awake. However, things changed again after landing a software job. It didn’t require waking up early. In fact, staying up late became imperative due to the assignments (during my “heavenly training” in Mysore) and work related issues thence. Waking up at 8 or 8:30 became a routine exercise.

I suddenly realized that I could reverse this trend. What better time than New Year to start doing things better!! And if it was necessary to give this thought a name, why not make it my first New Year resolution ever??I checked the time on my mobile. It read 00:45. I had spent almost three quarters of an hour thinking!!! I set the alarm to wake me up at 5:30 and dozed off.

A call from home brought me alive the next morning. After completing the call, I checked the time. It was 8:52………My first resolution!!!