Prema Jayakumar

The words sound so good. And so reassuring. But, does it also sound like one of those forlorn lines in a song about lost loves and lost hopes? You know, something longed for, but unattainable.
End of another year – a year that started with hope that once Covid and its attendant threats and constraints had vanished, normalcy would be restored and life would go on as before the infection that swept the world. And yet this too turned out to be a year mostly of conflict, danger, loss, scares (the ever-threatening shadow of climate change always hovering, mutated viruses turning up to cohabit with the original covid virus). In whichever direction we looked, we seemed to be descending into chaos and darkness. So much so that you wonder if order and peace will ever be the norm again.
And even the very festivals, religious and otherwise, with their crass commercialisation and consumerism seem to add to the gloom beyond the glitz. At least to someone who remembers a gentler and quieter celebration. I am generally against nostalgia, finding it often a pernicious way of keeping a not too pleasant status quo intact. But at festival seasons one cannot sometimes escape it – a longing for some simplicity, less of glaring lights and blaring music. Especially if one is beyond a certain age, I guess.
Still, it cannot be denied that marketing strategies catch us all unawares and we are told to go and buy till we are exhausted because this is the last chance of such a bargain in a lifetime. The simple gifts within the family have grown monster-like to eat up great amounts of money that could be better-spent elsewhere, turning gift giving into a game of one-upmanship. It also seems to engender a climate of expectancy in the receivers of the gifts, a bad culture of expecting bigger and better things year to year and festival to festival. Besides the state of the world which always appears near to bringing itself to extinction this ‘consume, consume’ mantra also moves one to despair.
Of course thinking of world affairs, of the figures strutting about the stage in the world, the country, and closer still, worsens the gloom. One feels like telling those in power anywhere: Take a look around, take stock of the realities and realise that a human life is only a short span in this earth’s life; that boundaries are arbitrary and will get re-written, statues will fall and palaces and monuments end up in mud. One knows it is a cry in the wilderness.
And yet, yet, it is in human nature to look forward with hope, hope that things around will improve, that mankind will find some wisdom from somewhere to face up to facts and to realise that conflict and destruction are not permanent solutions to anything. We hope against hope that political leaders and governments will somehow change into better human beings and institutions, that something like a transformation of the ‘squeezing, crunching, grasping’ Scrooge of Charles Dickens into a nice human being can happen to everyone. And this is a good time to do that.
Christmas brings joyful pictures to the mind and one hears melodies not heard for a long period in the mind too. So let us look to the ordinary, pleasant things that Christmas brings to mind – the songs, the stars, the food, the company that gives us joy and then beyond them to the reassurance that there can be a better life, perhaps not in the immediate future, but a little later. That people will become more sensible sooner or later and learn to live with each other peaceably. If not with love, at least with tolerance. Let us wish ‘Lokassamasta sukhino bhavantu’ with conviction at least because unhappiness around does not make anyone happier. And we would rather be at peace and happy.
What better time to dream of these things, than the festival that comes with the promise of redemption? Let us sing with the singer: Christmas time is here/ Happiness and cheer?… Olden times and ancient rhymes/ Of love and dreams to share…
So let us not give up hope, let us not give up our dreams, but continue in the belief that kindness and gentleness and humility will become virtues again and will rule the world.