Anniversary

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Time is an indivisible, impalpable dimension of our reality. The ancient Indians thought time was an endless cycle of kalpas and yugas repeating itself in terms of divine eternity. Indians believed that space divides but time unites in its eternal flow everything that happens. Indian culture did not have time-awareness hence there is no sense of history. The Vedas are a vision, a speculative meditation of ‘seen reality’, the world of sight and encounter with space. But later Indians thought of time in the calendar sense. Months, days, tithis and lagna divided time for social use. But mostly we follow time as a vast calendar after Anno Domini and calculate time, record births, deaths and other events. To remember events of the past anniversaries are observed. But no one celebrates the birth anniversaries of the earth as it is an irrelevant given for human drama. We observe anniversaries of national events – Independence, War victories, Nation builders. Personally we observe anniversaries of birth- marriage-death and other events which remind us of joy, pride or deep sorrow.

In the modern world we celebrate almost everything of man for we are now in an assertive phase of human history. Women’s day, Mother’s day, Yoga day have become familiar anniversary celebrations globally. But at the personal level we mostly celebrate birth and marriage anniversaries.  Death anniversaries too are observed but those are a low key affair.  Since life has expanded to embrace a vast reality of organized governance everyone tries to seek his own salvation by his ritualistic practices of living. Each occasion is celebrated, even the anniversary of a disaster. Hiroshima observes the atomic extinction of its population every year on a sombre note. Since joy and sorrow, achievement- disappointment are the two unavoidable binaries of life each occasion is remembered with appropriate emotional involvement.

But generally birth and marriage anniversaries are celebrated with snobbish extravagance. To remember the day you saw the first light is definitely a great feeling. Most people observe this day as a thanks giving day. They visit religious places or relatives dressed in new clothes and other fineries to show they are alive and happy to beat the challenges of the morrow. Those who are rich and so called celebrities they make their birth day bashes media events as if the nation participates in their good fortune.  Glasses are clicked, bottles get emptied and tons of food supplied by nervous liveried men and women in star hotels are swallowed in riotous revelry. Cakes of all sizes, shapes, colours and designs are cut by birthday boys /girls to the chant of happy birthday to you… and thunderous clappings drown the bands. But there are also some ‘ashamed to have been born’ cynics who dissolve their shame in alcohol in lonely dark rooms. The poor too celebrate, austerity and ostentation go on simultaneously in arhythmic beats.

In England any day could be the Queen’s birthday. To award and honour talents in different spheres of life Queen’s birthday is celebrated in traditional royal fashion. Some political hot heads show off vainglory in Saifai fashion like Mulayam Singh and Mayabati wears thousand rupee garlands to match the dazzling diamonds on her person; while some other leaders celebrate birthdays in remote villages alone or with family to show how austere and noble they are. In the bullock cart days of aristocracy some feudal lords celebrated the birthday of their pets –cats and dogs as if a new age of royalty has just dawned on their pawned kingdoms.

Anniversary of any memorable occasion or event is definitely a positive aspect of cultural attitude. The birthday of Gandhiji, Father of the Nation or India’s Freedom from British rule call for national celebration. Similarly personal birthdays or marriage anniversaries are certainly occasions to remember, however, miserable the post- birth, post- marriage days might be. What is needed is sobriety and love of life. Life is nothing but a memory making process. What better memories can there be than birthdays and marriage days? Man comes to the world to live a life, to build and create a world of his own; to create a private sub-system in the larger system over which man has no control. What matters is the satisfaction to have lived to remember the mile stones (not the mill stones) and to carve out a destiny using the past memory for future achievements.

We too are celebrating the First Anniversary of our blog savimuse.blogspot.com today to review what we have left undone and to plan out to do more for the intellectual entertainment of our dear readers. Our Anniversary too is a call for sober confrontation with our emerging reality. Celebrate with us dear readers, we promise to reach your hearts and minds soulfully.