The Hindu Business Line : Ticking to a new year

IT happens every year. A naturally loaded mind, reputation for needless thought and perennial walk on the wrong side of mirth. Like moth to a flame, it would seek the hag's co-ordinates, till one day you just fell through this world into another. Or is it this and the other intertwined? God knows. But it happened again yesterday, chilly evening half way down Oval, the white disc of the university's clock shining like a false moon.

Deep in the ether the resident oracle turned ancient cogwheels, bigger and more rusted than the ones atop the clock tower. Like the meeting and parting of VT's railway lines, so did the city's life slip from one wheel to another, tumbling through appointments it had never sought. The oracle or whatever she was made them.

This one had no serene look. She was all spit and spite with a sarcastic cackle for every new cog that dug in; steel tooth locking steel tooth and sending the city into wailing or celebration. Another appointment made; the hag would then down a few mugs of her brew, bubbling in the corner vat. Her eyes gleaming with villainy, she had shot back the last time, "Why not? It's a work of art!'' A gulp of drink and a triumphant hiss of a cackle; it sank like a final cymbal to the tick-tock background score of cogwheels in motion.

Like the many before and the many to come, she had decided this appointment too - a new year. "So, you are back to ask me why? Give it up you stupid fool. Surrender, you will turn wise," she said, wrinkled fingers running along cog teeth, a touch of oil here, a touch there to ensure that the orchestra of mechanical movement spread like epidemic to that giant of a wheel at the centre. "This is a delicate one, great fun though. It shivers in trepidation for a week as wheel after wheel transfers its energy; then for a full 24 hours it's a slow grind for the big one, one tooth at a time. But sad, the ending is abrupt. Takes another year for life to seep back in." She spoke like a seasoned butcher, sure of technique and end's finer details.

The hag existed and didn't. Her cogwheels ran the city; the city ran the cogwheels. It was to be a journey but somewhere the end was lost in the beginning; so you have the hag and the incessant march of her cogwheels as finality. She aged but lived. "Learning, aren't you? I see you are not talking of years gone by when the calendar opened in March, the vernal equinox, winter solstice, Julian calendar, Gregorian calendar and all that nonsense," her quip was laced by pure sarcasm, born of time chewed up day in and day out on those steel teeth. There was the light splash of mug scooping brew from the vat. Somewhere in that maze of machinery, her parched throat sucked a mug of madness empty.

"Ha! The inevitability of New Year! Planning to run this year too?'' The tenor of the question, like her existence, bore the answer. There would be no escaping her cogs. "There is mashed time on those teeth boy, each bite differently for every day. Make you twitch. You will dance, sing and drink your way into another year for no reason except that you always did. Kind of hurts if you have a mind, doesn't it? Kill it boy, kill it, that thinking between your ears. Grow up!'' The tone was all too familiar; the inevitable explained, starts losing steam. Turns axiomatic.

"Here, drink this,'' she barked, "you will stop thinking and start living, no start dancing.'' There was aversion budding in that. Patience was not her forte'; after all she chewed time, ran the cogwheels behind time. Strange that what lay behind time was an instinct to command, to order the wheels and expect a dance. The ripple in the cup was a slice of her predicament, a circle. "That wheel reaches all. Don't tell me you are going to resist when all are dancing.'' She pointed to the crowded streets of Fort below. "See that? You don't need my cogs; they will chew you up. Question them, won't you? Ha!'' She was right.

Down below was where her purpose fused into the city and became the serpentine street on which everyone danced. Christmas over, there was only a bounce yet to peoples' walk. "Still, four wheels off the big one. Watch when it cuts in; that whole street will celebrate like one. People need it boy and you dare ask them, why January, why not March or October? Or why at all celebrate, when you can only pretend it's a beginning, right?'' Another splash, of mug in brew. "This city is great. There are wheels in here for ten different new years, a hundred festivals, why there's even one to send that up like a rocket,'' she said, bony finger touching the dark outline of Jeejeebhoy Towers.

There was a shudder and a loud hum as the wild hours of the fifth day before New Year bit in. "Early grind! You better run boy, this will be one wild party. But remember, push too far, I put in a wheel with your name on it.'' She bent down to observe closely the straining fifth wheel, one cog locked firmly to keep the moment alive for a thousand ecstatic souls, the next swinging in like a giant hook to an ever hungry shark. A draft of cold air blew in at the exit. The Oval was empty, save the streetwalkers in the shadows.

"You will be back next year, isn't it?'' she asked, for the first time, troubled. "Strange that my address is known to only those who resist.'' "Happy New Year,'' I said. A streetwalker gazed at her watch, then me. The hag's wheels were working.