The outfit is ready, the tickets are booked, conveyance is mostly sorted, and if all goes well and no hooligans disrupt the festivities, it will be a happy New Year’s Eve. In another scenario, none of the above is applicable: The new year will be welcomed from the comfort of the couch. Maybe all the necessary accessories will be thrown in: Hot chocolate, warm socks, fuzzy comforters, the works. There is ceremony.

The emotional labour of birthing the new year stays hidden behind it.

Like all transitions, the New Year’s Eve is a curious in-betweenness of time and space (a friend says December-istan is a place). The heartbeat of a dream and prayer and hopes, not quite born yet. We don’t want to jinx anything. We have to wait. Superstitions abound, just like around a high-risk pregnancy. No baby clothes to be bought, no names to be decided, no cheer to be allowed to escape our hearts till we hear the baby’s cries. And then we drown the cries in ecstatic expressions of joy. We finally let our hopes be. Hopes are as fragile as infants, resolutions like their lanugo. We lose resolutions faster than infants lose their fine hair. Statistics actually show that most resolutions we make on January 1 have........

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