Sir,

Every New year is an opportunity to look back on events and things that took place in the past 365 days.

2016 has brought its ups and downs, as usual. I’d like to list a few things that one would remember this year for.

The loss of the great entertainers as the year progressed: Leonard Cohen and  George Michael were the closest to my heart, now they’re no more. On the bright side was the Nobel Prize for literature to Bob Dylan, one of the best decisions and significant ones: finally the concept of what constitutes ‘literature’ has been broadened.

Star Wars fans will mourn the death of the original ‘Princess Leiea’, but the force will always be with us as new adventures from The Empire will hit the screen. Rogue One was mesmerizing!

It was also the year where I had the opportunity to enjoy over six months of ‘free 4G’, thanks to a particular industrialist who is probably building his own ‘evil empire’ in the Indian telecom sphere.

This year also marked an increase in vinyl record sales in India, and the return of the ‘record player’. Inspired by my mentor’s love for ‘pure sound’. I bought my first record player and am lovin’ it!

For the rest of India, it was a time of upheaval: train accidents galore with loss of lives and platitudes from the political class, loss of income and pain as 80 percent of the country’s cash was pulled out of the marketplace, the forced digitization of  a country where more than half its citizens are barely literate, and all sorts of political drama. The northeastern states have become the new playground for the so-called ‘national parties’, and 2016 saw all kinds of dirty tricks in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and even to some extent in our very own Meghalaya.

The year unfortunately saw a rise in intolerance, and the growth of black-and-white pseudo patriotism and jingoism.

Nature wasn’t very kind, and Chennai and other places faced floods, others have seen drought conditions and water wars. The politics of water came to the fore. The Northeastern states of the country faced heavy floods and landslides.

2017 dawns, and one looks ahead, hoping for the best, but wary that the world may see more tensions, and that there may be more upheaval in store.

Yours Truly,

Nicholas Jyrwa

St. Antony’s College, Shillong. Meghalaya

  #lookingback2016, letters