So the year is ending and this is when we get flooded with lists. List-makers wait all year, all 365 days of the year, for this month, this moment. They wait quietly in dark lanes till it is December, and then they jump out with their ten best this and ten best that.
We know it in our hearts that newspaper rooms are busy collating these as we speak - ten best films, ten best books, ten best tourist spots, ten best pizza places...
Hurried calls are made to people, who at gun point mumble out something or the other, their main concern not to sound like losers. But once these things are out there in black and white, we the readers can only bite our nails and give in to our FOMO (fear of missing out).
Suddenly we are on the back foot. The ten best everything of 2020 have sadly passed us by. We did not read the right books, eat in the right places, listen to the right songs… We were nowhere, we did nothing. Lists go out of their way to make us feel backward and illiterate.
It seems like others were aware and conscious, and woke from January 1 itself, clued in to what’s happening, what' hip, while we were sleeping off the homemade hooch.
You may be shaking your head, saying this was a different year that went by, didn’t you notice? But crises, like a pandemic, only make the list people more determined. They are still going to come at us waving their favourites and must-see. With wagging fingers and naughty winks, exaggeratedly worried only that we not miss out anything even at this late hour, when 2020 is literally bidding bye at our doorstep.
You will notice their breathlessness as they establish their smugness: 'What do you mean you did not watch The Undoing till the end?' or 'Where were you and what were you doing when Arnab was arrested?'
The ‘ten best’ then audaciously dips its toe into next year, daring to tell us what we are going to just absolutely love in 2021, even though we have not asked. So we sit helplessly while they bombard us with the places we must go to, the spices we must add to our food, the baskets we must shop in, etc.
Even words are huddling into shortlists and prize camps. After ‘lockdown’ won this year’s verbosity war hands down, we are all set to start the new year with ‘vaccine’. A word set to music, a word that is sexily sauntering up the street hands in its pockets, doin’ the neutron dance.List-makers are all in consensus over this: ‘vaccine’ is set to take all lists by storm this new year.
(The writer can be contacted at shinieantony@gmail.com)