Amongst the many beautiful ditties that a person named Patience Strong penned to help people be strong and patient, she had this to say for New Year: “New Year means a new beginning. Leave the past behind. Lift the latch and open wide the windows of the mind...Let the sun come streaming in upon the heart’s cold room—shining into hidden corners; lighting up the gloom…”
With New Year, we not only have resolutions and the turning over to new leaves, but also greeting cards, diaries, and calendars which create problems and prospects. In the British era, father received the loveliest cards from his English colleagues and friends. They decorated the drawing room for at least a month. We never had the heart to throw away the beautiful cards.
But even later, when the quality of greeting cards was not good, I know we had this problem of what to do with all the cards. In fact, on the blank side of some of them, I have written the words of the songs I need to learn while I walk in the evenings.
During our professional life, diaries poured in like rain—that was the time when we had lots of visitors—and we knew why. Sometimes there would be a ball-point pen or key chain with them, and our friends loved these little gifts.
I used to think why in these days of shortages should there be such a large amount spent on diaries which no one uses or can use. At the most we need one for recording expenditure or keeping an account of clothes sent for ironing (alas, the dhobi tribe is vanishing so we don’t need a book to keep dhobi accounts).
We also treasured the Japanese scenery calendars sent to us by our business friends. The calendar paper was silky smooth and the children covered their books with them.
Our doctor brother-in-law in Tirunelveli used to receive calendars of gods and goddesses—much looked forward to by his many patients. He’d wait to collect all that he received before distributing them. I clearly remember how he used to hang them on a nail or two. We knew that the inevitable was going to happen—one day it did—those nails—heavy with fruit—collapsed with a big thud. By this time six months of the year had gone by and he just asked people to help themselves to those “droppings”. There were large holes where the nails had borne the burden! Nobody wanted the ones with no picture but with only bold dates.
Today, with dimming eyesight, we prefer the ones showing the holidays and dates in large letters. Nowadays, greetings come by Internet or by SMS. I find this quite impersonal and useless. In fact, I found a New Year message on my cell recently from a Union minister I don’t know at all—I am told he is in charge of telephones!
I steady myself with Patience Strong’s words, of inviting “hope” into your home and “letting cares fade”. Anyway, we now have no cards and so no cares to wonder what to do with them.