The start of another year
With the dawn of this new year, I am reminded of the fact that I – as well as my childhood friends – have been around for over seven decades.
While that is a long time in itself, I have realised that our lives have spanned not just two different centuries but also two different millennia. What a lot has changed in these 70 plus years!
As a child I remember my grandmother making long distance phone calls (they used to be called ‘trunk calls’ in those days) to her brother. He lived in Kurunegala and she lived in Colombo which was a distance of just over a 100 kilometres (it was expressed as 60 miles in those days). She had to dial zero to call the telephone operator and book the phone call – and then wait for anything from 15 minutes to two hours to get to speak to him for a limited time of three minutes. I recall her speaking quite loudly when the call did come through and she got the chance to speak to her brother – because, I assumed at my young age, that the sound had to carry a long distance over the telephone wires to reach him!
Today of course, we can use things like WhatsApp, FaceTime and Zoom to communicate instantaneously with folk all over the world, looking at them as we speak.
Music in those days, if one was lucky enough to have a record player (known as a gramophone or phonograph) was stored in the form of vinyl records which were played by having them rotate on a turntable. Before electric powered record players came on the scene, gramophones had to be wound with a crank – rather like the way early motor cars were cranked up to be started. I have in my lifetime witnessed the transition from vinyl records to tape recorders to cassette tapes to Compact Discs (better known as CDs). These days we can download music as and when we fancy from the internet. We can even download movies and YouTube videos and watch them in the comfort of our homes – a far cry from the cinemas and ‘Bioscope-Halls’ of the old days!
Having watched on TV (in full colour and High Definition) TV the Sri Lanka vs New Zealand ODI played in Wellington last week, I recall how as a schoolboy we used to listen to cricket commentaries over the radio. Voices like those of John Arlott and Brian Johnstone commentating on test matches from England and our own ‘Voices of Cricket’ Lucien de Zoysa and Bertie Wijesinha bringing alive the action of cricket matches in our own country – these men provided ball by ball commentaries over the radio in the days before television was even heard of. I recall the legendary Premasara Epasinghe whose evocative descriptions and Sinhalese neologisms elevated the art of cricket commentary for listeners in our country. Not only did I listen to him doing his first commentary in 1971, I also had the privilege of tuning into his historic commentary from Lahore in March 1996 when Sri Lanka won the World Cup.
My generation has survived – not just polio, diphtheria and tetanus, thanks to this country’s excellent island-wide immunisation programme – but also pandemics like COVID-19 and swine flu. We have lived through a terrorist war and two insurgencies as well as several riots and emergencies (although we have lost friends and loved ones in those violent episodes in our country’s history). We are now looking forward to the dawn of a better era, hoping that the new brooms that we have elected to govern our country will not descend to the low-level behaviour of previous crops of politicians.
January this year is an auspicious month for us in this country. We observe Duruthu Poya day on the 13th and the festival of Thai Pongal the day after. Even the Jews this year celebrated the final day of Hanukkah, their Festival of Lights, on January 2nd – and the Islamic celebration of Hazrat Ali Jayanthi (a day of celebration in many parts of India, especially in Lucknow and Uttar Pradesh) falls this year on January 14th.
In addition, on January 25 this year there will take place a rare alignment of the planets – which, according to the Times of India, will usher in a year brimming with transformation, success, and productivity. Astrologers predict that this will be a cosmic catalyst for beneficial change.
So whatever religious persuasion you follow – or even if you do not subscribe to any particular religious persuasion – may I wish all my readers a very happy 2025.
May this auspicious month of January 2025 be the harbinger of a new year for you of peace, good health and contentment.
Sanjiva Wijesinha is the author of Tales From my Island – see https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Island-Stories-Friendship-Childhood-ebook/dp/B00R3TS1QQ/
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