A joyous journey

Come December and there is an air of good cheer mingled with whiskey and carols pervading the cold breeze that descends on you from faraway North Pole. With the Pujas done and dusted, one looks forward to yet another round of religious revelry, finally ending with the year itself.

My earliest memories of Christmas are that of Boarding school in Kurseong, where the arrival of the Merry Season heralded hectic preparations to go home for the winter hols — as we called them. The majority of the boarders were not Christians but everyone was so caught up with its spirit that we literally ran around the whole day, wishing an advance Merry Christmas to all. Everyone had plans, esp. those who were going home to Calcutta. The charms of Park Street and its many joys were not lost to us. After all, Park Street had something for everyone — Flurries for the young and Mocambo for the not so young!

During college days, it was a true season of merry-making — no other festival seemed to stir our imagination as much. The party bugle would sound, and months of storing bottles of different types of cheap liquor, some good, some clearly undrinkable, would be pulled out with fanfare. Party dates would be closely scrutinized to ascertain which would be the easiest to gatecrash without too much injury to either body or ego! As the years rolled by, the essence did not change much for me. Our home would light up with the Christmas Tree, and soon enough, a series of parties would follow. Our Tree was almost as wobbly as most of our guests, barely managing to stand on its feet like a drunken sailor.

But as the years rolled by, life, like good wine, mellowed, and slowly, the late-night parties were replaced by Midnight Mass and the party guests by carol singers. The old Christmas Tree, which we would unpack every December, stood rooted to the floor, the only threat now coming from our pet Missy who, denied the chance to sing along with the carolers, did her best to bring it down. The dancing shoes were no longer fitting into the ageing feet. Or maybe Old Father Time started tapping me on the back, pointing me towards the other Christmas, the one which had a story behind it far away from the song and dance. My Christmas journey had started with fun as its main theme, and now came the realization that somehow, amidst all the revelry, this fun never really let me embrace the Joy of Christmas.

Joy to the world is the message of Christmas, and there is no other festival where almost everyone, without exception, regardless of faith and belief, seemed to immerse into this spirit. Christmas caps are donned in offices, malls and unlikely places are decked with lights, children clamour for and receive gifts, and everyone wants to be kinder, warmer and a little more charitable to those less fortunate. In the old days when cards were delivered by postmen, almost every family received and sent one. These were annual reminders to friends and foes that they were not forgotten. Being a Christian is not a precondition to say "Merry Christmas" to strangers. The story of Christmas may not be known to all but its spirit has always been embraced, at times a bit too spiritedly! As we progressed from handwritten cards to downloaded ones on emails, and now to copy, paste and send types, that spirit lives on even in a world as fractured as the present.

Now as we settle down to quieter Christmas evenings, listening to carol parties or old Christmas classics by Jim Reeves, my mind often travels back more than three decades to my first Christmas in Manipur. I was a young IAS trainee in a small hillside district headquarter near the Myanmar border. Winter was settling in, the fog thickening and, suddenly, as the first week of December glided into the second, I realized that the district administration had been reduced to its lone trainee Assistant Collector. Everyone else, including my boss, the Collector, had packed their bags and shifted to the capital city some 70 km away for the Christmas holidays! The Collectorate had become a deserted building, with just the lone probationer sitting there, much to the annoyance of his personal staff. I was unmarried, my home was in a different planet called Delhi, and I had not yet mastered the art of driving. So, there I was stuck in a small village with the cold aggravating and misery for unwanted company. Freshly minted at the Mussoorie academy before coming to Manipur, I was determined to sit in the office, howsoever deserted, and write my daily diaries. It was on one such day, while chronicling my somewhat sparse activities, I heard the somber chimes of a church. It was followed by what seemed like a choir of people, mostly women, singing in perfect unison. In the next few days, as Christmas Day drew nearer, the singing became louder and emanated from more than one source. The music seemed to flow down the hillside from all directions, dotted as it was with tiny hamlets and small wooden churches, some makeshift and others housed in residences. It was not Beethoven or Bach but the simple and pure sound of the faithful gathering around their small homesteads, singing the gospel hymns in their native language, that enthralled me. It drowned the common sound of gunfire whose echoes were regularly heard on these otherwise serene hills. A miracle had happened — guns on both sides were silenced by the soulful hymns.

Christmas has been a journey for me. I started by embracing all the fun it promised — vacations, gifts, parties. As I moved past a frivolous youth to marriage and family, and am now approaching senior citizenship (most reluctantly though), my take on Christmas has become simple. The joy it emanates goes far beyond merry making. There is joy because it brings with it hope, and that hope is implied in the freedom it gives during this time – the freedom to reach out to those different from us and embrace their culture; the freedom to see good in others; the freedom to love and to forgive our enemies; and to do all this without fear. It's that time of the year when Christmas, like a fairy, throws a little bit of magical stardust on all of us and we cannot help but embrace it.

Views expressed are personal