107 – When events immortalize the year
Every passing year has a theme, a liet motif of its own that stays as its signature. The year is known for it for posterity sake. Once sufficient layers of time have settled, nothing remains of the year. It is buried with a finality only time can produce and centuries can command. One year with so many moments has so many possibilities across the theatre of mankind that at the end of it all, each event at best is reduced to nothing more than a tiny crease on a vast forehead. As the year unravels, each event fights for its rightful place amidst many, almost as if hundreds of advertisements vie for our attention every day – and yet at the end of the day each occupies no more than a few moments of our span. But say a century later, it is the event that gives the year a place in the annals of history. The year which was the cradle of many moments and events has no identity of its own, but the identity given by that one magic occurrence. The year is immortalized because of the event.
While the immortality of a year may be country, community, vocation or geography specific, there are a few events which transcend such boundaries and have achieved universal immortality. Interestingly, individuals too have histories and there are some years that become immortal in our own diaries. They are the milestones that we remember because we got shaped by them.
Let’s look some of the years here in the history of India which are immortal and reasons thereof.
1857 – An otherwise listless years, it’s known in the popular imagination of India, as the year of our first war of independence; although the imperialists still call it the sepoy mutiny. I wonder if independence would have come to us in 1947, had the war of 1857 not have happened.
1983 – The underdogs did it and shifted the epicenter of the cricketing future into the Indian subcontinent. The English and West Indian domination was about to end. The Kapils-Devils fuelled the imagination and aspirations of an entire generation and demonstrated ‘yes-we-can’ much before the phrase was popularised, and a decade later we were churning champion players and now champion teams.
1991-While liberalization had actually started in the eighties under Rajiv Gandhi, history will remember 1991 as the year which awakened the Elephant called Indian economy. Despite all the gloom that the eighties had left for us with – from terrorism, to mandal, from low growth to mounting debt, from job scarcity to political uncertainty – 1991 has ensured immortality for itself in the history of Independent India. We all are, in small measure or large, children of 1991.
2008 – This is my pick. Although it’s too early to predict if the financial crisis that had its origins in the mindless greed in the financial markets of USA, and which spread like a wild fire across the continents, leading to fallen hero’s, failed organizations and massive job losses – will actually be remembered as the face of the year, my hunch is – it will. My belief is that 2008 will be the year that will be known and remembered as the year that introduced an element of caution to unbridled consumption and taught us the merit of living within our means and saving for the proverbial rainy day.
Each year there are drastic, dramatic, unique, shocking, eye & hair raising, path breaking events – but rarely is the incident so huge in impact, so overwhelming in affect, that it usurps the identity of the year and gives it its own. So while Godhra and Gujrat riots, Singur, Mumbai Blasts (and all other blasts) so on so forth were important events for the year, they may not(and I hope not) have the power of becoming the alter ego for the year itself.
So what will 2010 be remembered for? Is there one such powerful event that has the power to immortalize the year? So which are the usual suspects -The scams, the resurrection of the stock markets, the Bihar election, the innumerable corporate mergers and buyouts? While each of these events are important, does any of them has the ability to transcend its own limitations and become the face of the year itself? Forget the larger imagination of a people, was there something in the year gone by that you will remember it for – or was just another year; one amongst many.
Guru
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