The thing about childhood is that you get used to receiving gifts even on the small occasions. When I was a child, out of the many possibilities, I never failed to get a watch on my birthday. And my birthday falls right around the New Year. My foremost resolution was to somehow prolong the life of my watch for at least a month or so. But like so many other resolutions, it used to falter, not by a lot but by a margin of a week or two. Then, come Tihar, it was my sister’s turn to get me a watch. No matter how hard I tried I could never make the watches last a year.

As my age changed, so did the watches’ design and price. With years, plastic changed to metal, hundreds turned to couple of thousand and with it changed my resolution and span of it. My resolutions changed from the durability of my watch to quality control of my life. “I’ll do something productive, different, study from the beginning of the year and be more adventurous so that when I look back at the end, the year doesn’t feel a complete waste. I’ll get a sense of accomplishment, sense of being.” But like many of you, those resolutions were only temporary. My gifts started to last longer but with it resolutions started to shrink to just a couple of days.

As I reminisce, the transient resolutions were directly related to the number of New Year celebrations in our country. For what used to come once a year, came as frequently changes in the Nepali government. Once, only Bikram Sambat mattered but now Nepal Sambat, and the Gregorian calendar too have come into factor. Why stick to a resolution, when you get the joy of creating the same ones come a couple of months time? Amid all those celebrations, true gist of the New Year and resolution that came with it lost its essence. Maybe it’s time to take the New Years as an occasion to fortify and not reiterate our oaths. But then again, aren’t resolutions fickle by nature?

Byanjankar is a student at the Pulchowk Engineering College