Happy New Year

Well, here we are at yet another new year. Second one since January. For those benighted souls unfamiliar with Sri Lanka, note that we have a couple of new years, just like the Chinese. What are my new year wishes then? Hell, I ain't wishing for anything. At least it brought some peace & quiet and I have a small backlog to clear too. Other than that – nothing. Oh there is meeting the neighbours (who probably think I am either gay or Jewish or even worse, crazy) with plates full of traditional foodies, and seeing some forgotten relations, OK the list is long, and I have to admit the new year is aptly celebrated by myself. And there is no underestimating its historical and cultural significance.

So why was howling if it were of that value, you might venture to ask. Well its a long story and an LA psychotherapist will have a field day if I recounted. Now I don't like the psychotherapists with all there pseudo-science and repressed memories and all. The very reason that I try not to take new year seriously is those psychotherapists and there counterparts in Sri Lanka – The Astrologers.

Now I had a skeptical approach to all those gods, planets, karma and all since I was just a weenie, and I don't like them scaring the living daylights out of nice old ladies out there who take astrology a tad too seriously. Sure its a good past-time, like watching paint dry, when you are bored s***less. Taking serious is another kettle of fish to be sure. These guys are trying to scare us with there predictions and bogeymen – just think of it when you are about 10 years and.....

One day, long ago, I thought to myself, is it all true? Harder my pre teenage brain tried to tackle the problem, more absurd it grew. Like Descartes, like one of those famed philosophers, it suddenly happened to me that astrology is bunk. Took me some time to come to terms with a world without bogeymen, a world without predictions, a world without planetary help... ad infinitum. But one gets used to anything with time, and by the times I hit mid teens, I was out of clutches of monsters that live only on our minds and who scare most people out here, those neighbours eating my sweet-meats included. No wonder they think I am odd. I mean they are on the lookout for Saturn (most vicious planet) & afterlife problems, while I have no care in the world as far as those matters are concerned... Odd lad indeed. Is he ****? lets have them guessing, lest one of their daughters fall in my bed due to some past karma which I might have committed unthinkingly in a past life.

I have taken ample precautions not to commit one in this life, mind you; well, not around the neighbourhood anyways.

Now this brings us to the earthquake predictions offered by the esteemed professor at the Peradeniya University (no less). Now I must confess that I harboured some doubts to the use of word university on that institution – specially as it had declined academically during the past 25 odd years. Peradeniya Girl's High School would be a rather apt name in place of the U word. To cut it short, this feller out there had predicted an earthquake in around Japan. Who couldn't? There is hardly any need to predict, we are all waiting for Atlas shrugging his shoulders. Its true there is a serious concern around misuse of science and prediction of the inevitable here, but I must say that feller had some grounds – other than mere statistical inevitability out there.

Sadly for him, he chose the worst moment to come out of the closet: The new year season.

Why? Cause this is the time when astrologers hijack historical event of Sinhala new year with all their catch words and junk science. No one is going to look at you in a soft light in these troubled times, like those octals with periodic table (chemistry OK – not those other periods, you are trouble if you missed one of those, specially with octals, just think of child support if nothing else – scared are you?), it is all a matter of very bad way of putting things which would have drawn some favourable attention had it not been the cause.

So do I take him seriously?

Nope, its all hogwash and I too could make a few predictions on that matter, its the earthquake season you dummy. 

To hell with quakes and all. 

Just simply have a Very Happy New Year you all.