Calendars hanging on the walls invoke a lot of nostalgia in me. The ones with birds, mountain peaks or animal faces- I have vivid memories of them. I always used to have one in my room while growing up. And the first thing I did with a new Calendar? Turn to the month of July (I was born in it) and see what picture it has. Invariably I used to find that particular picture the worst in the whole calendar and sulk through the year. Not to mention, sibling rivalry ensured that my brother who is a January born always had the best picture of the lot and thus worsened my agony.
Now for the past 8 years of running my own household, I have never invested in a calendar. In initial years I did get them from Mom in Law as she worked in a bank and often got good looking calendars from her clients but gradually she stopped sharing them with us. Both Saurabh and I saw no need of relying on calendars for dates. For the general aesthetics of how we wanted our house to be, we never hung them. So questions like- "10th ko kya day padega?" or "Wednesday ko kya date hai?" were all answered by our phones or simple mathematics of going on adding 7 to today's date :)
But this calendar culture has some everlasting memories attached. To me every 1st of January was associated with changing calendars around the house. Choosing which calendar should be put in our room (the kids room) and which should go in Ma-Papa's room. They would come rolled so we used to open them, roll them the other side, figure out the small red string on the top, hang them all neatly on the designated nail and of course then turning the pages to see days of all our important events like our birthdays and parents' anniversary. This activity in my memory is synonym to how the first day of every year would be spent.
Just yesterday my sons got their homework notebooks and insisted that I take some sort of a dictation. I wondered the reasons behind kids being proactive about Dictations. But I realised soon that they were both excited to write a new year in the date that they mention on top right. They wrote with excitement- 1 slash 1 slash 14! Maybe this is the excitement I had with those colourful calendars on my walls.
Oh these silly memories and their associations. Years are turning still but no pages are carrying them now :)
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