Paraphernalia

The table calendar was useless now, he thought, as he undressed after a good long evening celebrating the advent of another year and got ready for bed. It had been gifted to him by a senior from college, a calendar depicting various aspects of a place that had once seemed so alien but now represented a time which he longed for as if it were home. The thought of this made him smile and he picked up the 5x7 inch calendar, paraphernalia purchased for probably no more than a hundred rupees at the college's cooperative store, and flipped to January and leafed through each month, every memory, of the year that had just passed.

It always ends, he felt. Here was a picture of students sitting on the lawns, there was a picture of the college's founder, each month's picture with a caption to depict the mood of the image. How foolish, he chided himself, to rummage through the past for traces of glory like a homeless man rummages through garbage for scraps of food. He decided that he would throw the calendar out the first thing in the morning.

At December, the month that was barely four hours over, the caption read Solitude. How apt, he thought, that after all those pages, those captions of hope, sunshine, and dreams, came one so brutally honest and real. The last mile, walked alone. Winter in Delhi. Cold, desolate, empty. He turned the last page.

But only it hadn't been the last page, there was one more. Maybe the printers had calculated that adding one more page would be of no incremental cost. Whatever the case had been, the true final page lay before him, the image of the clock tower and two students sitting in front of the auditorium. The month, January of 2012. The caption a single word.

Friendship.

The calendar in his hand almost seemed to smirk with an air of condescension between his fingers, vindicated in it's extended usefulness for one more month. He placed it slowly back on the table beside his bed, in its rightful place - a testament to remind him that beyond the end, new beginnings always prevailed. That solitude is necessary, but it is not tantamount to isolation, as the companions sleeping beside him and in the next room, and even several blocks and pin codes away, served to remind him. Friendship would always last beyond the year. And the year after that. We are alone in choosing the paths that we must tread, but our friends and family will always walk beside us, outlasting even the bleakest winters and the coldest mists.

Happy New Year.