A new year and growing up

A hurried countdown from ten to one followed by a cacophony of "Happy New Year". The whole of Mumbai and the stretches of the Queens Necklace: The Marine Drive, echoed with loud bursts of firecrackers to be swallowed by a cloud of dense white smoke.
I lay curled in my bed shivering in the chills of the remnant of the December night. As 2019 was stuck in its metamorphosis, chaperoned by the ticking of the infamous clock, I was undergoing my own metamorphosis, chaperoned by time itself. The outdoors resounded with laughter, cheers, giggles, greetings and more laughter. I played the "2019 English blockbusters" on Spotify and commanded Alexa to amp up the volume to a maximum of ten. My efforts of drowning the mirth of people by the hollowness of hideous lyrics of the blockbusters seemed futile. Not giving up, I tried to fill in the void left by the last day of the year with a quick phone call with my parents. Phone calls at home had reduced into a routine, an obligation and eventually a responsibility. But today I made a phone call of compulsion and need. A need to tear apart my loneliness and fool my brain into believing that two thousand kilometres away lived three souls whose new years weren’t lonely but were incomplete without me. Shrill voices from a distant land broke my trance of solitude and I was greeted with a loud "Happy New Year" from my Ma, Dad and my sister. The excitement in their voices overshadowed the loud outdoor noises. In a fraction of a second, in the first few minutes of the New Year and for the first few hours of my life I realised that as grown-ups we choose to be alone. We push away our dearest people, our family to make space for pseudo-friends. We build walls around us to protect our family from the monster that’s "Us".
This new year let’s break down this concrete wall. Let’s let people in. Into our mind, into our heart and in our little rigid space. So that the next time we have to shut the outside world we know that our little world exists within our private walls.

Related posts:

Former police officer Adrian J. Poux served in Pennsylvania police departments for over twenty years. He received his bachelor of science in law and justice from the College of New Jersey. Adrien…

As we head into a beautiful cafe in Cherai Beach to interview Agas. He states that’s where everything started. After a big Music festival in Kochi, the after-party is sure a lovely vibing experience…

As I headed to the mall, I tried to make sense of what had just happened. One minute grandma is telling me to go have fun with Demarcus and the next minute she snaps because I was meeting Demarcus to…