New year greetings from "a civilized human being"

"Tomorrow it will be a new year," my father said.

It has been a few days since he talked about anything other than the damn virus.  No, not COVID-19 but the shingles that has made the lower jaw movements a tad painful.

After a couple more minutes of chat, I said, "you talked a lot today compared to two weeks ago."

"Yes, it is slowly getting better.  But very slowly," he replied.

And then we talked about the coronavirus too!

He passed the phone to my mother, who also remarked about the new year.  "But, it is not like how it used to be celebrated," she added.

It is the Tamil New Year.

We mark time in many ways.  Birthdays are our personalized new years.  There is the January 1st new year. The Islamic calendar.  Rosh Hashanah. The academic new year. We have a gazillion "new years" all in the same year.

But, celebrations are muted in the time of the coronavirus :(  Strange and eerie times these are!

Tamil is one of the oldest living languages of the world--if not the oldest--with a vast body of literature.  The older I get, the more I appreciate the immense richness in which I grew up, but failed to systematically study.  I am all the happier that I came across the fantastic biography of Tamil that David Shulman authored.  As he so wonderfully put it, "to know Tamil" can also mean "to be a civilized human being."

This classic from quite a few years ago, with lyrics by the poet Bharatidasan convey a lot about the language. And, of course, set to delightful music by the old masterful team of Viswanathan-Ramamurthy.



But, of course, the old Tamil is even more difficult to understand than Shakespeare's English can be to a teenager of today.  We needed experts to interpret that old Tamil to us.

We need experts to guide us out of this global catastrophe.  More than ever, we need humanists to interpret the human condition.

As we struggle through, we will continue to mark the passing of time ... by wishing us better times ahead.

Happy new year, dear reader!

New year greetings from "a civilized human being"

This is poetry month, and it is the Tamil New Year.

So, here is a classic from quite a few years ago.  The lyrics are by the poet Bharatidasan,



This poem is a sincere and touching homage to the language, Tamil.  And, of course, set to delightful music by the old masterful team of Viswanathan-Ramamurthy.

Tamil is one of the oldest living languages of the world--if not the oldest--with a vast body of literature.  The older I get, the more I appreciate the immense richness in which I grew up, but failed to systematically study.  I am all the happier that I came across the fantastic biography of Tamil that David Shulman authored.  As he so wonderfully put it, "to know Tamil" can also mean "to be a civilized human being."

But, of course, the old Tamil is even more difficult to understand than Shakespeare's English can be to a teenager of today.  We needed experts to interpret that old Tamil to us, but the teachers we had in school fell far short of conveying the beauty and lush gold in the historical past.  Come to think of it, those teachers murdered the language.

The song in the video below is a poem by Manonmaniam Sundaram Pillai.  It later became the official state song of Tamil Nadu.

Happy new year, dear reader!

The old year's gone away ... by the rivers of Babylon

We have to keep time and contextualize the life that we lead.  The passing of a day with the sunrise and sunset.  The week consisting of seven days.  A month with weeks, and a year with months.

Have you ever wondered why there are seven days in a week?  After all, it is arbitrary--not anything defined by the sunrise and sunset, right?  It could have been ten, given our ten fingers to count.  Or, five for the fingers in one hand.  Why seven?  Why this "totally random, basically meaningless divisions of time" that is "constant to almost every single culture"?

Jews, who use a lunar calendar made up of either 12 or 13 months beginning with the New Moon, use a seven-day week. The Bengali calendar, which splits the year up into six seasons of two months each, uses a seven-day week. Even the Bahá'í, with their 19-month (and change) year, use a seven-day week.

So, why seven, dammit?

“Only by establishing a weekly cycle of an unvarying, standard length could society guarantee that the continuity of its life would never be interrupted by natural phenomena such as the lunar cycle,” writes Eviatar Zerubavel in his book, The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week. In other words, this is all the moon’s fault for being so unreliable.
Zerubavel especially links the need for an interval of this length to the rise of market culture: there needed to be an agreed-upon time in which vendors and buyers could meet, and about four times every lunar cycle seemed a pretty good frequency.

Damn market! ;)

our best guess for the creation of the seven-day week is that the idea originated in ancient Babylonia. The Babylonians, living in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), held the number seven as a holy number, that being the number of objects in our Solar System they could observe at the time: the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The Babylonians already had months, just like anyone else, and if you want to split up a period of around 29 days into a smaller period, why not divide it basically into four parts, especially when that number is damnably close to your holy number of seven? So the Babylonians used a seven-day week, with the seventh day having certain religious responsibilities (relaxation, cessation of work, worship, that kind of thing).

Yes, from the cradle of human civilization.  And then the idea spread--perhaps one of the first global memes.

There’s nothing in particular about a 7-day week that makes it a requirement for anybody to observe; it seems that the idea took off simply because there was a need for a unit of time somewhere between five and 10 days long, and seven was a cool number. What’s surprising is that humans haven’t come up with anything better

What was good for the Babylonians is still good for us in this 21st century.

To say goodbye to the old year, here is a poem from my favorite source:

The Old Year
by John Clare
The Old Year's gone away      To nothingness and night: We cannot find him all the day      Nor hear him in the night: He left no footstep, mark or place      In either shade or sun: The last year he'd a neighbour's face,      In this he's known by none. All nothing everywhere:      Mists we on mornings see Have more of substance when they're here      And more of form than he. He was a friend by every fire,      In every cot and hall-- A guest to every heart's desire,      And now he's nought at all. Old papers thrown away,      Old garments cast aside, The talk of yesterday,      Are things identified; But time once torn away      No voices can recall: The eve of New Year's Day      Left the Old Year lost to all.

Happy New Year!

"Hi ma, I wanted to wish you a happy new year.  Call me when you get this message. I am waiting for the plane--there is a delay."

It was hard to ignore this when it came from right behind me in the lounge.

I guessed it was the Rosh Hashanah greeting.

Happy new year, indeed.

We mark time in different ways.
Birthdays are our personalized new years, right?
There is the January 1st new year.
The Tamil New year.
The Islamic calendar.
Rosh Hashanah.
The academic new year.
A gazillion more "new years" all in the same year.  How about that!  Now, isn't that a simple measure of diversity on this planet!

So, why was I waiting in a lounge?  And what lounge was that?

An airport lounge, where I put in enough hours that would be qualify for time-and-a-half if I were to report for those many hours in a day at my office!

All because of a missed flight.

No, I didn't miss the connection because I was chasing after some redheads.

It was not my fault by any means. I swear, on the redhead sitting next to me ;)

The flight landed in SFO on schedule, but after taxiing, we had to wait a few minutes for a gate. We almost reached the gate, when the plane came to a stop.  "We are waiting for gate attendants" the voice said.  I imagined valets at the gate who would collect the keys from the pilot and then after everyone deplaned, the attendants take the plane for a quick spin!  Ah, my imaginary world is quite fascinating, at least to me.

A few minutes later, we turned around.  "We have been reassigned another gate."

We reached the new gate.  The jet-bridge inched closer and then stopped with a clear gap.  "The bridge is stuck and we will need to wait until they get a mechanic" the flight attendant announced.  The damn thing wouldn't retract either for us to deplane via the door/steps.

Many among us started getting fidgety.  The co-pilot tossed his bags on to the bridge and hopped over and kept going.  "Can I do that too?  I have only five minutes to get to my connection" a female passenger pleaded.  "Sorry. We have liabilities to worry about"

Finally, with a simple technology of a footbridge over the canyon, we were allowed to exit the plane.  I sprinted to the gate for my connection.  The door was closed--boarding had ended.  In the post-9/11 era, there is no opening the door once it is closed.  Through the window I could see the ground crew getting the tiny little plane ready for departure!

I was/am on my way to end one year, and to bring in a new year.  The term of the office I hold in the professional association expires with the annual meeting that will end on Saturday night.

Maybe getting stuck in the middle is merely the cosmos telling me that the old year will be over soon, and it will be a new year, again.

May you, also, have new beginnings!

Never a Year Like '09