By: Tanveer Magrey
2024 bade adieu. 2025 made entry. Paeans are being written for the passing year. Resolutions are being drafted for the New year. People recall the moments of glory and achievements of the past year with beaming faces and swelled chests. The hard times of the past year are being remembered with forlorn faces. This is what the Social Networking Sites (SNS) are littered with for the last few weeks.
I didn’t write an elegy to 2024. I didn’t pen down a welcoming note to 2025 either. I am in between hope and fear. Hope that the purple patch of my life is just around the corner- ready to embrace me. Fear that the tentacles of the harrowing days would come back in this year. I empathize with those who had a tough time last year. I covet those who were having the time of their life last year.
I have had my fill of resolutions every year. But they wither away in the thin air in the first few days of January. But few things remain universal. As we age, our priorities keep on changing. What was important in preceding year can be a footnote in this year. Health is a universal priority. Everyone wishes to be as fit as a fiddle in this year to ply his/her trade to the best of his/her capabilities.
From personal experience, I feel if one doesn’t take right decisions at right time in his/her academic career, health takes a beating at the first place. It is true in all verticals of life. I have a hands-on experience of it. So, to all those who are in schools or higher secondary’s or colleges, make your career choices early on and follow them with surgeon’s precision. Embellish the tapestry of your CV with internships, research papers, hands-on experiences so that you can later on make a cut at job sector without breaking a sweat. It is an unsolicited advice. But I felt to give it to you. Because ‘only a wearer knows where it pinches the most!’
I am one of those lacs of people who have made infamously Kashmir to the top of unemployment chart in our country. And believe me “being unemployed” is more painful than cancer patient. Being Cancer patient, you are still respected, loved and looked at with empathy. Being Unemployed, you are ostracized and looked down upon. Your friends and roommates of university days sever their ties with you. Your suggestions are not welcomed in family gatherings. Social gatherings is a far cry. You yearn for death. Sometimes, you go an extra mile to imagine your own death to get away from the disdainful eyes of people who crack jokes at your expense behind your back.
As I am typing away these words, two things lurk in my mind- how to get stipulated amount for treatment in 2025 and can this piece be entertained by any publication? I have managed to leapt into 2025 with a hope that a purple patch in my life is as far as the stream flowing seamlessly in the front courtyard of my house in every spring.
Let us cap off this piece with hope and prayer. May the Government public library of my locality get sacksful books of Gabriel García Márquez, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ramachandra Guha, Anton Chekhov, Basharat Peer, Mirza Waheed, Shahnaz Bashir, Sachin Tendulkar, Leo Tolstoy, and Manto to name a few. Books can calm the frayed nerves, keep anxiety at bay and help to brave the vicissitudes of fate with vim and verve. May this year treat us better than last year. Ameen!
