In which Cyrus Broacha warns you of the perils of a New Year

Illustration: Satheesh Vellinezhi
| Photo Credit: Satheesh Vellinezhi

Enough of the New Year. It’s done. Please don’t mention it. We can’t go on like this, discussing the New Year into February. January 10 is the cut-off date. After this date, anyone referring to the New Year, who is not actually involved with central or local governance or has an Instagram following of over a million, will be prosecuted.

While a host of people are preoccupied with positive resolutions this New Year, there are definitely a few things not to look out for. Hey, I’m not talking about the brand-new gym member, who takes an annual membership in January, goes to the gym for exactly one day, finds parking to be an issue, gets totally demotivated and never goes again. I mean, we have so many candidates for the role of just causes, such as, the under privileged, the orphaned, stray animals, but to make an urban upmarket gym, your personal NGO is a bit too much, don’t you think?

Okay, as usual, this writer is misleading you up the garden path, (I know this for fact, because I am this writer), the truth behind this column is far more excruciating. People of India, also foreigners visiting Mumbai, let me, warn you of the perils of the New Year season. We have now in Mumbai a very dangerous disease, which starts in December, and sort of culminates in January.

On this day, Mumbai Marathon (for the lack of more painful phase) is held. The whole of South Mumbai, where the poor live, is shut down, thereby allowing lakhs of people to run rampant on the roads, like a herd of angry bison. If you don’t have a sense of life in ancient Moenjodaro, this would be it. I won’t even comment about men with skinny legs, (takes one to know one bro), or women who need the whole community to pull them out of their tight lycra suits post race.

For me, though, as a forced observer, do you know what is the worst thing? They seem happy. There are big smiles and giggles all around by people who insist on using their legs for transport 120 years after the first motor vehicle came into existence. How is that for satire? This marathon community is likely developed on the lines of the Sicilian Mafia. Make fun of one, and they all come after you. They also have their own version of the code of omerta i.e. silence. No one talks ill of the community, yet no one can give, or refuse to give, a logical answer as to why they can’t board a bus or call an Uber, instead of this embarrassment in human legs.

The writer has dedicated his life to communism. Though only on weekends.