Nav Varsh

The first month of the new year is whizzing past us with alarming speed. It almost feels like we were ushering it in only yesterday when in reality, two weeks have passed. The last of the Lohri fires have died down. Mingled with wintry early morning fog and the remains of the previous night, their ashes have been swept up and away. Along with them, our offerings of grain, gud and til mixed with our regrets from the past year, our hopes and dreams for the new one, have returned where they belong; to the bosom of this earth.

A sense of sadness, of remembrance of what has been lived and lost follows on the heel of each celebration our bodies dance to. Much like the almost perfect lines of each kolam drawn to usher in the summer, beauty is touched by transience and fragility. All the hours of loving labor spent bent and focused on white powdery lines will disappear as each design fades. Perhaps that is the truth of the human condition; that celebration is almost always tinged with nostalgia and loss. But what is also true about the human condition is that despite everything, we find ways to come back to longing and working for a better future. Our every day resilience and effort in the face of personal tragedy, larger calamities and strife are testament to this. Perhaps that is what rituals of festivals, harvests, seasons ending and beginning, the many ways we celebrate the arrival of nav varsh; the new year, signify.

Like Albert Camus famously stated,
“In the midst of winter, I found there was within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says no matter how hard the world pushes against me, there’s something stronger-something better, pushing right back.”

In choosing to celebrate in whatever way we can, big or small, in choosing to honor age old celebrations in the way we eat, dress, sing and dance amidst challenges and grief, we proclaim both our humanity and the inevitability of this universal truth; that sorrow and joy go together. Like our eyes, they sit together- sisters in looking inwards into our soul and outwards at the world with each breath.

As this nav varsh beckons and teases us with endless possibilities, tell me, will you keep both eyes open or closed?

Penned By: Reema Ahmad