I resolve to!

Twelve days past the beginning of the year, and I guess the resolutions post should not be delayed further. However, this year’s resolutions are more of a must-achieve than the usual wish list. So here goes:

1. Learn to Drive

Mobility has been a bitch. I haven’t been able to meet so many people who I wanted to, and the others who I have managed to meet, have been thanks to their consistent efforts to pick me up and drop me back home. It feels really horrible, this depending on people to transport me around. Delhi’s such a wonderful place to look around, and I saw the Rashtrapati Bhavan only last week (almost nine months after I came to the city – thanks to PK and her spur-of-the-moment plans!) and a colleague at work tells me almost every day that it’s ‘one life’ and one must put on the gum boots and take a walk to a new place with every opportunity we get, or before we know it, time is going to run out. So there; I have always wanted that Volkswagen Beetle and that Blaupunkt music system and the freedom to be able to zip around on my own, without having to ask for favours and this year, am going to do this, for myself. The Beetle and the Blaupunkt have to wait a while, of course, but I have a pretty good idea of what I want 🙂

2. Meet people, socialize positively

I have very recently realised that the only people I know around me are the ones which have just appeared as a part of my life and circumstances have gotten me to meet them. I have never taken an additional effort to go out and meet new people though my profession entails me to do so most frequently. Apart from that and the target that my boss has set for me, I will be striding out, to meet new people, make new friends and network a little more, even though the thought of forced friendship makes me anxious

3. Lose weight

If my life was a client, the work-in-progress report would have this as a pending activity for more than two years! Clothes have been shying away from me, and winters have become the happiest season because I can camouflage all the lard with layers and layers of clothing. This will change, and no matter how small the change, it will begin this year. Not being confident about oneself is something I have never experienced and I refuse to let this situation be. So Elemention Gym, here I come, with a vengeance!

4. Learn to play the violin

Something I have always wanted to do and the instrument I have loved with all my heart – I think of it to be the most soulful yet alive string instrument. Sometimes, in retrospect, I wish that parents had not been the typical Bengalis and got me to forcefully learn to play the harmonium, and let me learn the violin – I would have been a different person. Although, very discouragingly, Baba says that the best violinists begin from the age of three, and I am slightly over 23, the possibility that I pick up the basics is very remote. But challenges are good, and I am not aiming at playing with a symphony orchestra (although that would be a dream come true. Sigh.), and this is something I hope to initiate sometime this year

5. Learn or re-learn a foreign language

Languages have been a passion – but somehow I have never been able to get a solid grip over even one and for this, I only have situations to blame. Arabic was a third language in school – we were taught it from class 5 to 8, and then they just let it go. So now I can read and write like an ace, but speaking is a major problem! Similarly, during graduation, we were given a choice of learning a foreign language and I chose German. For a year, every weekend a teacher from Max Mueller came down and I was liebing it! But then, post the shifting of campus, the classes stopped and the incomplete knowledge annoyed the hell out of me!

6. Learn to say ‘no’

One of the largest predicaments in my life has been the inability to be nasty to people, even those who would derive great joy in seeing me troubled. So, as is professed, if one cannot respect oneself, then they cannot demand respect from anyone else. Letting this continuously happen in the hope that ‘what-goes-around-comes-around’ doesn’t work anymore, and even if it does, the turn-around time is too much of a wait. Hence, no more letting people walk over me, no more loving unconditionally, no more giving without expecting anything in return, no more being agony aunt, no more mothering people; from this year, it is all going to be about me and the few special people who deserve the attention. Will also learn to say ‘no’, to answer back, to argue and to not suffer in silence, because the only person who does not benefit from all the altruism is myself.

A lot of other things I plan to do through the year, including a lot of travelling – for the past seven years, the only immigration stamps on my passport have been Muscat, Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi! Need to take a trip, and use the camera – definitely sometime this year.

It is also a conscious decision to write more often. It helps lighten up and also serves as a memoir, both positive outcomes!

Among others, I also intend to learn to cook. Have had my share of pizza, greasy Chinese, momos and baked beans on toast!

2011, am here – guns blazing!