This article was published in the Telegraph magazine, Kolkata, India, on December 25, 1989. But i'm not posting it under the "Salad" section because I think this one is still, well, green.......
Christmas.....and all that ! (1989)
When we were very young, so young that we weren't even sure what age was all about, Christmas had no meaning: it was just another night during which the grown-ups were invariably out, and we were tucked into bed and told to keep quiet and fall asleep quickly if we didn't want the Indian equivalent of the bogeyman to come along and spirit us away.
Then we grew a little older and read about Dennis and Joey, and realised that Christmas meant snowballs and evergreen trees, stockings pinned up before a fireplace that wasn't lit, and a big fat red man who came calling on a reindeer-drawn sleigh with tons of gaily-wrapped presents in the boot. And we wondered whether we were being deprived, because we never saw the man; we never got any presents; our experience of snow was never allowed to extend beyond the visual; and the only stockings we had were kept under lock and key because they related to school and didn't merit the kind of cavalier treatment Dennis the Menace saw fit to mete out to them.
We grew older still, began to ask the right questions, and suddenly knew a lot that hadn't earlier occurred to us. We were introduced to a phenomenon called pneumonia, that dictated that snow and susceptibility must never be allowed to come together. We were informed that there are Christians and Catholics and Protestants and others, and that those 'others' were not privileged to receive the attentions of Santa Claus, nor were they bound, morally or religiously, to partake of the traditional festivities. We were taught that it smacked of cupidity to expect presents on days other than one's birthday, and refused to subscribe to the dictum that it is more blessed to give than to receive. And we tried and tried but could never quite tell the difference between reindeer and sambhar, until we were eventually informed that one has to visit the right country to be able to understand the distinction.
And Father Time watched all this with a growing sadness until, sick to his stomach with it all, he, like James Hadley Chase's Miss Shumway, waved his wand and brought us the kind of Christmas we were finally able to understand.
We know now that it isn't Christmas, the day, that is particularly important or significant, but more Christmas, the season. We know that this season means iridescent lights on Park Street. We know that it means cotton-wool beards on cardboard cut-outs in display windows. And we know that Christmas means that enterprising shopowners covertly hike prices by 50%, and then overtly reduce them by 25%, and then yell "Discount !" until they're blue in the face.
We know that the onset of the Christmas season means that we must get our black ties and pin-striped suits out of the mothballs and give them a thorough airing, since we'll be using them on and off for a couple of weeks. We know that we'll have to make out a mailing list and spend a small fortune on greetings cards, not because the fires of Bethlehem glow warmly in our hearts, but because a respected gentleman a few years back wrote volumes on something called "public relations", and we know from experience that he was talking sense.
We sing Christmas carols with an elan that we really have no right to feel, because the tune that is running through our minds at the time is either "Careless Whisper", or "Oye Oye", or the Moonlight sonata, according to taste. For most of us who are still in our prime, Santa Claus is experienced through a leather-clad performer on a decibel-packed stage, or a dinner-jacketed evening at a club, or an amber-coloured decanter that has no bottom.
We each do our own thing, singly or in groups, until the clock strikes midnight, and then say "Merry Christmas !" to each other in a manner that suggests that we wouldn't have minded saying "Happy Holi !" instead, had there been a logical enough reason for it. Nobody says "Yo, ho, ho !" any more, because he doesn't want people to think he's drunk. Very few people think at all of Jesus - "I'm an atheist, thank God !" they say, for Dumas made it fashionable. And those who do observe the midnight mass and the Christmas spirit whisper, sotto voce, to Our Mother of Perpetual Succour to gloss over the sins of their hedonistic brethren.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it's over, and we move in weary droves to our respective beds, ever mindful of the fact that New Year's Eve is yet to come and we need to conderve our reserves of energy. And as we tuck ourselves in during the wee hours, we fancy we hear a plaintive wail in the darkness:
Silent night, holy night
All is calm, some are tight
Divine decadence ?
Let there be light......
Christmas.....and all that ! (1989)
When we were very young, so young that we weren't even sure what age was all about, Christmas had no meaning: it was just another night during which the grown-ups were invariably out, and we were tucked into bed and told to keep quiet and fall asleep quickly if we didn't want the Indian equivalent of the bogeyman to come along and spirit us away.
Then we grew a little older and read about Dennis and Joey, and realised that Christmas meant snowballs and evergreen trees, stockings pinned up before a fireplace that wasn't lit, and a big fat red man who came calling on a reindeer-drawn sleigh with tons of gaily-wrapped presents in the boot. And we wondered whether we were being deprived, because we never saw the man; we never got any presents; our experience of snow was never allowed to extend beyond the visual; and the only stockings we had were kept under lock and key because they related to school and didn't merit the kind of cavalier treatment Dennis the Menace saw fit to mete out to them.
We grew older still, began to ask the right questions, and suddenly knew a lot that hadn't earlier occurred to us. We were introduced to a phenomenon called pneumonia, that dictated that snow and susceptibility must never be allowed to come together. We were informed that there are Christians and Catholics and Protestants and others, and that those 'others' were not privileged to receive the attentions of Santa Claus, nor were they bound, morally or religiously, to partake of the traditional festivities. We were taught that it smacked of cupidity to expect presents on days other than one's birthday, and refused to subscribe to the dictum that it is more blessed to give than to receive. And we tried and tried but could never quite tell the difference between reindeer and sambhar, until we were eventually informed that one has to visit the right country to be able to understand the distinction.
And Father Time watched all this with a growing sadness until, sick to his stomach with it all, he, like James Hadley Chase's Miss Shumway, waved his wand and brought us the kind of Christmas we were finally able to understand.
We know now that it isn't Christmas, the day, that is particularly important or significant, but more Christmas, the season. We know that this season means iridescent lights on Park Street. We know that it means cotton-wool beards on cardboard cut-outs in display windows. And we know that Christmas means that enterprising shopowners covertly hike prices by 50%, and then overtly reduce them by 25%, and then yell "Discount !" until they're blue in the face.
We know that the onset of the Christmas season means that we must get our black ties and pin-striped suits out of the mothballs and give them a thorough airing, since we'll be using them on and off for a couple of weeks. We know that we'll have to make out a mailing list and spend a small fortune on greetings cards, not because the fires of Bethlehem glow warmly in our hearts, but because a respected gentleman a few years back wrote volumes on something called "public relations", and we know from experience that he was talking sense.We sing Christmas carols with an elan that we really have no right to feel, because the tune that is running through our minds at the time is either "Careless Whisper", or "Oye Oye", or the Moonlight sonata, according to taste. For most of us who are still in our prime, Santa Claus is experienced through a leather-clad performer on a decibel-packed stage, or a dinner-jacketed evening at a club, or an amber-coloured decanter that has no bottom.
We each do our own thing, singly or in groups, until the clock strikes midnight, and then say "Merry Christmas !" to each other in a manner that suggests that we wouldn't have minded saying "Happy Holi !" instead, had there been a logical enough reason for it. Nobody says "Yo, ho, ho !" any more, because he doesn't want people to think he's drunk. Very few people think at all of Jesus - "I'm an atheist, thank God !" they say, for Dumas made it fashionable. And those who do observe the midnight mass and the Christmas spirit whisper, sotto voce, to Our Mother of Perpetual Succour to gloss over the sins of their hedonistic brethren.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it's over, and we move in weary droves to our respective beds, ever mindful of the fact that New Year's Eve is yet to come and we need to conderve our reserves of energy. And as we tuck ourselves in during the wee hours, we fancy we hear a plaintive wail in the darkness:
Silent night, holy night
All is calm, some are tight
Divine decadence ?
Let there be light......
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