It has been exactly a year since I last woke up with a hangover. Last year this day I was at work, nursing a headache and sore throat but enjoying the quiet and peace of an office whose sensible employees, much to my delight, were enjoying their Christmas offs in their homes or in places other than office. On some days, it is a joy being alone at work..like it is joyful being alone generally.....on some days! "On some days only" is a necessary "*conditions apply" clause.
In 2007, I spent Christmas eve decorating my 2 feet tall Christmas tree with many tiny bells, gifts, mistletoes, stars, lights and shifting it from one point to the other in the balcony in a bid to find a spot from where my tree could see the world or at least Western Express Highway, Oberoi Towers, and the cityscape from Malad to Bandra. Such a fight! I do not have a tree now for the past two years. But if I were to revive the practice, it would still be unacceptable for me to have the tree inside my house and not close to a window or a balcony from where it could see the world (or part of it). I cannot imagine how boring it must be to stand decorated and facing walls!!! It better see and be seen.
It is hard to recollect the Christmas of 2006. Amid marriages of two cousins and my own impending ceremony, Christmas was lost. Like many other things I am sure. I think I was in Pune. Or maybe home. Or I could have been anywhere and I would not remember.
I owned a pair of pink corduroys which I liked wearing over a fitted, comfortable black T. Having bought the two on Christmas Day in 2005, I wore them for a party I attended in the evening in Borivli's IC Colony. The streets of IC Colony were full of people dressed in quintessential Christmassy clothes headed for Midnight Mass. This is the time when there is smell of perfume and many perfumes mixing together, wafting into and across streets. Of course, this is what they mean when they say that something is in the air. Christmas is! Can be. I do not own the corduroys anymore, nor the black T, nor the beige heels I wore with it. I do not own the silver pendant anymore. Nor the watch, nor the hair nor the mind.
Some midnights are spent in kitchens of dear friends (rest of the house being full of sleeping and tired relatives) on their pre-wedding night, discussing the ceremonies of that day and the anxieties of the next. Puneet got married in 2004 on the 24th of December. A beautifully fresh and cold Pune evening it was! One that made the nose burn with each breathe. And of course, the kitchen platform numbed my butt but we sat and chatted away. Pre-wedding anxieties can be never ending.
My Christmas tree was my pride, my pastime and my object of beauty for a good ten days during Christmas. I shopped for a crib for it at Bandstand on a pleasantly cool evening in 2003. When I showed pictures of my Christmas tree, decorated in all its finery, to a very dear friend it elicited a, "Ummm, where is the tree though"? response from him that made me realize how over the top I had gone with the decorations. I miss some responses such as these that made me see my "areas of improvement" with a dash of laughter and humor.
A parrot green cotton kurta and a beautiful paisley scarf was the highlight of Christmas day 2002. Accompanying Neha for an audition for a movie at Khar and then deciding to crash into Christmas celebrations at a friend's place At Bandra (as catharsis for the horrible feelings associated with horrible performances at the horrible auditions), Christmas was very Bandra, very merry and very nice.
Christmas 2001. Next....
I had not planned for any festival as much as I did for Christmas 2000. I had a different outfit for Midnight Mass and a different one for the party that followed. I had butterflies on having met someone very nice, Mood I loomed large on my mind, the performances therein did. Natasha and Christie were great companions during that December and my parents were out of town. I was in college and there was long-term Myopia.
And I need to stop blogging and head out......for air...the one that has Christmas in it.
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