{"id":4012,"date":"2016-07-27T20:53:23","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T15:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4012"},"modified":"2016-07-27T20:53:23","modified_gmt":"2016-07-27T15:23:23","slug":"the-view-at-40-new-year-barfed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/?p=4012","title":{"rendered":"Why the Year Hasn\u2019t Begun Until You\u2019ve Barfed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span>f you\u2019ve noticed, halfway through the first month of the <\/p>New Year<\/span><\/a>, something strange begins to happen. Two weeks of jumping on and off treadmills and chugging kale smoothies for breakfast, you begin to sprout a halo. No really. Your skin shines like it\u2019s sprinkled with moon dust, your gut is flush with good enzymes since you\u2019ve stopped Swiggy-ing on speed, and you\u2019re all zen now that you\u2019re abstaining from all drinking, abusing, drugging, outraging, bingeing, and sexting. You\u2019ve even organised your house into Marie Kondo\u2019s wet dream and acquired a shit load of serenity. <\/span>\n\nAt this point you\u2019re barely even human. You\u2019re a bundle of good <\/span>karma<\/span><\/a> cruising on the highway to nirvana, expected to check right out of the birth cycle at the next exit. <\/span>\n\nAnd then, two weeks later, you wake up on Sunday morning with your head in the toilet bowl, throwing up the 3 am butter chicken roll from Sigdi. Your golden skin is now splotchy from the heat of the <\/span>booze<\/span><\/a> that has replaced the blood in your veins, and all your noble intentions are sprawled on the bathroom floor with you. <\/span>\n\nIf anyone so much as mentions kale at this point, you will choke them. Your body only wants aloo fucking puri. As you lean over for another round of purging, you do the <\/span>math<\/span><\/a>. The new you lasted exactly 14 days. <\/span>\n

If anyone so much as mentions kale at this point, you will choke them.<\/blockquote>\nThe new year is a fairly aggressive thing. It barges in every January, pushing its face up in your business and demanding that you become a better person. It demands of us things that I\u2019m not sure we have left anymore, and in return it offers only kale smoothies. It demands that we wipe up all the mess we\u2019ve made of our lives in one smooth stroke and begin afresh with a delirious energy that is fucking hard to summon at 40. You don\u2019t want a new you. Hell you barely even wanted the old you. You\u2019re done with <\/span>optimism<\/span><\/a> and the hope and all that other bullshit that the young relentlessly peddle these days. All you want to do is knock their milk teeth out. But you don\u2019t, cause you might be 40 but your mother still slaps you. <\/span>\n\nPoopy, my three-year-old mongrel with liquid eyes, is wiser than me in these things \u2013 and most others. Poopy is a moody <\/span>asshole<\/span><\/a> who retains the right to either lick your face or just rip it off -depending on how his day is going. Everyone who comes into our home knows that it will be 50-50 \u2013 and they will just have to wing it. We\u2019ve spent many training sessions trying to gently tell him not to do that to people\u2019s faces, but Poopy isn\u2019t buying. He has accepted that he was an unpredictable dick in 2019 but has decided to stick to it in 2020. Thank you very much. So at the stroke of midnight, while the rest of us were screaming drunken promises of turning over a new leaf, he was snoring on my sofa not giving a fuck about leaves. <\/span>\n\nNeither was my 11-year-old son. He registered that a new year had arrived (he had three weeks of holidays to show for it) but he didn\u2019t know what the fuss was about. He spent the last week of December with an overdose of screens (yes, I\u2019m that sort of a mother and I\u2019ve already issued <\/span>a public statement<\/span><\/a> to that effect, so save your outrage for Deepika Padukone) knowing with a calm certainty that January will arrive and they will be yanked away. He was too busy with Netflix to think about hope and all that he\u2019s going to achieve this year. He showed zero interest in being a better version of himself. Perhaps because the world has still not told him that he\u2019s not good enough. <\/span>\n\nIt makes me wonder then, whether it is the exclusive privilege of the very young or the very wise to have escaped this toxic \u201c<\/span>new year, new you<\/span><\/a>\u201d business because the rest of us, it seems, are just chasing our tails (Poopy incidentally does not believe in chasing tails.) Because, you see the fact is that we already know our halos will soon evaporate. As the months roll by, we will not eat our vegetables, we will lie our way out of uncomfortable situations, make out with people we shouldn\u2019t be making out with, and Swiggy the hell out of our dinners. <\/span>\n
We will come to accept that we are irreparably damaged and that some days are good, most days are bad.<\/blockquote>\nWe will come to accept that we are irreparably damaged and that some days are good, most days are bad. On good days we will <\/span>greet people<\/span><\/a> with a friendly lick, on most others we will bite their face off if they piss us in anyway that is not even fully logical. That\u2019s just the way we are. <\/span>\n\nAnd it\u2019s not just us. The year that has just arrived, with all its edgy new promises, will behave badly too. There will be some truly bad movies (hello <\/span>Tanhaji: The Unsung Hero<\/span><\/i><\/a>), politicians will say epic shit, we will unearth scams we\u2019ve not even dreamed of, and ugly, ugly news will flood our timelines. Goons will chase young lovers during Valentine\u2019s week, the electorate will most certainly disappoint us in the\u00a0 upcoming elections, the summer will burn us to a crisp, and the monsoon will certainly deluge us, but not before the drought spells disaster for our farmers. Also, Chetan Bhagat will write a new book.<\/span>\n\nOf course there will be good things too but when you sit on that <\/span>bathroom floor<\/span><\/a> \u2013 and yes we will all get there \u2013 you will humbly accept that most of it will be bad. 2020 is probably not going to be the year you will conquer karma or even make a dent in cellulite. At this point, you will barf again. But now, after barfing you will feel cleansed of your good intentions and of kale. And it is at this delicate stage, where you\u2019re still hovering between life and death-by-hangover in a bathroom wafting with alcohol fumes, the old you will gingerly step over your prone body and sit on the toilet seat like an abdicated king reclaiming the throne and whisper into your ear \u2013 Bitch, I\u2019m back. <\/span>\n\nAnd those will be the sweetest three words you\u2019ll ever hear.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new year barges in every January, demanding that you become better. It demands of us things that I\u2019m not sure we have left anymore, and in return it offers only kale smoothies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7271],"tags":[4786,1838,1839,7344,3636,2019,7345,7346],"class_list":["post-4012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","tag-bathroom","tag-booze","tag-drinking","tag-karma","tag-new-year","tag-planet-of-the-apes","tag-the-accidental-prime-minister","tag-the-view-at-40"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy the Year Hasn\u2019t Begun Until You\u2019ve Barfed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The new year barges in every January, demanding that you become better. 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