December

The vey last month of the year and this city gets nervous. A lot of people believe that madras is doomed in December thanks to various natural calamities that have visited this city in December. Many years ago a tsunami swept this city away with devastating results. None of us had seen anything of the kind before but life settled back for those of us not affected and we forgot all about it. Then last year a flood hit us. Yes it rained but not the kind of rain that we expected. The city drowned slowly and infrastructure collapsed.  People helped each other and somehow we got through the worst. This year we braced ourselves for another flood but the rains never came. Instead a leading politician died and as we waited for the violence and damage to start, it all got eerily quiet. No disturbance of any kind was reported and to the surprise of everyone, the city conducted a funeral with clock work precision. Considering how popular she was it was a huge relief and a testament to the fact that the people of this state can show the rest of India a few lessons in dignity and restraint . We moved on and waited . A few days later a cyclone was announced. Now we were prepared for floods and cyclones have a way of bypassing our city for other shores so we didn't take it too seriously . As it started raining we were still bracing for floods, but the cyclone had other ideas. In what was yet another first after many years, the city was torn apart for a day of ferocious winds which left trees dancing and bending till they broke into many pieces. Large trees that have been part of our growing years were all felled with the fury of nature. At the end of it all the city resembled a forest. Not a single street was spared. Roads were blocked with fallen trees and it is still being cleared. The city was stripped of its famous green cover and no one had seen it coming.

Personally it was also a month of great sadness with the death of a well loved uncle who took the trouble to visit us a month ago and then dropped dead which no one had expected him to do. It was also a time when old people in the family suffered strokes and suffered silently. When friends lost parents to old age. When pop icons of our youth passed a way and we suddenly felt our age and had to face the eroding of our youth and our music. And like the sadness of another year  gone by a little bit of our lives as we know it is lost. We have our memories and we need to live with those as the year slowly winds down to a close.

Christmas as always is a good time, a time to meet old friends, and to have our regular Christmas dinner. Exhausted by the string of visitors I decided to out source cooking to the mother and sister and did all the baking instead . Midnight service as usual was a grand one with a lovely message though the night turned warm.

And as the sun set on yet another year I look back with mixed feelings. It was the year my mother turned 85, it was also the year when we thought we had lost her. It was a year when she probably realised that so many people loved her enough to make time to be with her. It was also a year when cousins and uncles were lost forever despite being too young to die. But as the year ends I count the many blessings we've had and look forward to new ones in the new year.