NEW YEAR's EVE....

FROM DECEMBER 31st

The big night arrives, Ziraj has booked a Mumbai DJ for the New Year’s Eve party so we’re duty bound to go to Dolphin Bay. The first part of the evening is fun, we watch as hundreds of Indians swarm onto the far end of the beach paddling fully clothed in the sea. We wander over to Dolphin Bay where our elephant Rajive stands fully decked out in festival gear with glorious golden headpiece. We take our front seats watching as Indian families stroll by in their ‘Sunday best’ mixed with mottley gringos, some dressed up, some dressed down some dressed in drag ….. all seeming to have a nervous agenda. Our boys at Dolphin Bay are frenzied and distracted, all 5 courses arrive at once! We decide to take a stroll, the cliff edge is packed, there’s a nervous tension in the air, young foreigners in the bars drinking, Russian babouzchkas scantilly clad, young Indian men on the cliff edge oggling and knocking back hard liquor. I begin to feel uncomfortable …too many people, too much alcohol, too long a drop down the unguarded cliff edge!
Back at Dolphin Bay the mucic is pounding ….. instead of the Bangra and Bollywood disco we’ve been promised techno tunes at a deafening decibal pierce the air. Lots of european kids jostling on the dance floor, wielding bottles of beer. I’m not feeling up to this! I’m feeling like peace and quiet and reflection, I want to leave, but stay a while for my pals, Corinne is dancing with the boys. Midnight comes and goes …. It’s New Year and nobody knows! No acknowledgement, no Auld Lang Seine, no friends raising a cup of kindness, no remembering 2006, one of the hardest years of my life. Perhaps it’s best that it’s not remembered, but somehow I want to acknowledge it, the difficulties, the sadness, the loss. The speakers are bursting my eardrums, some young buck sprays beer over the crowd, the police arrive to extract a bribe … …. my cue to leave. I leave Corinne with a New Years hug before walking away to go bury my head in my pillow and make a new year’s resolution, never again! No more drunken New Year’s parties! From now on I will have contemplative New Years in remote and beautiful places.