Anniversary: Recollect, Reflect, Redress

‘An anniversary is a time to celebrate the joys of today, the memories of yesterday, and the hopes of tomorrow.’

An anniversary is the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. Anniversaries come knocking on our doors, asking us to count our gains and move on. Contrary to popular myth, it is not the time to ponder over your losses and bang your head worrying what went wrong. Most people review their losses and try to learn from the mistakes that they have committed; hardly do we come across someone who savored his achievements, patted himself on the back and told himself, “Well done! Keep it up!” It requires confidence and self-belief and that distinguishes a winner from the also-rans.

Anniversaries could be a birthday anniversary, a marriage anniversary, a death anniversary or the anniversary of any other day between the dates of birth and death. Sometimes the occasion is one of joy, sometimes of regret, sometimes of achievement, sometimes of mourning, sometimes of wonder and sometimes of bitterness. There may be occasions each year when you celebrate the anniversary cursing yourself for having caused it in the first place!

Though an occasion to celebrate, anniversaries can also be moments of reflection and evaluation. If it is a marriage anniversary, couples tend to look back and take note of what worked in their favor and what did not. Some irritating habit of the husband, like throwing a wet towel on the bed after a bath, may have driven the wife up the wall but looking back, that same quirky habit seems like the glue that has kept the channels of communication open between them. There are also happy moments which, on being brought to life in the landscape of the mind, drive away the polluted mist that may have settled down on the relationship.

Birthday anniversaries are not as ambivalent in appeal, unless it happens to be of a person who’s serious and sensitive about life and the shadow of death running parallel to it. On a birthday anniversary you relive the day when you first got a bundle of joy in your arms. Subsequent birthdays remind you that the joy is still around for you, though the umbilical cord is losing its metaphorical attachment with increasing rapidity.

In addition to the two anniversaries which have grown to occupy dominant significance, there are many others which have paled away. Some are so insignificant that they do not find mention in anyone’s almanac. However, the date may not remain with you each year; the experience has not been buried in the sands of time. Do you remember the day you first saw a railway engine? An airplane? Or the first trip to the market holding the little finger of your father? Or the first time you got wet in the rain? Or the first time you held a butterfly in your palm? These can never be a day of the past, though there is no anniversary to remind us of these days. You celebrate their anniversary when you close your eyes and turn the clock back; your bleary eyes make the celebratory applause.