In about 15 odd days, 2024 will end and 2025 will begin. The intervening time will see, arguably, a spike in people diving headlong into activities, known as “habits”, that they are otherwise trying to kick. This they will do in the (perhaps delusional) hope that on the first day of the New Year, they will be successful in once and for all getting rid of the egregious entity that has taken control over their minds and bodies. The entity that eggs you on to hit the fridge in the middle of the night to polish off the leftover chocolate cake, for instance, or urges you to utter untruths to wriggle out of unpleasant situations like having to tell your friend that you “LOVED” the long post he or she posted on Facebook even though you hadn’t actually really read it. (Or for that matter, that photograph of his or hers, which you gushed about in the comments field, was actually really too tacky for your liking.) You can, and you usually DO, go ahead and indulge in these innocuous deviations in the intervening time between now and the new year because you think, “Well, I am going to stop lying or cheating on my diet from 1 January anyway….so what’s a little lie to get out of a sticky situation?” And so scroll down to that silly post by the showoff friend and hit the “like” button by all means. Or better still, go for the “love” icon.

Known euphemistically as “New Year’s resolutions” the vows we make seem to be based on some strange belief that a miraculous willpower, elusive until now, will suddenly descend from the heavens on 1 January and take control of our good senses and drive out the devilish propensities that make us do things that we don’t want to do. And so people promise to stop drinking, smoking, lying, cheating, overeating, underperforming and what have you. And usually, since the promise is in the future, the intervening time is often a time to “let go and live it up” before D-day.

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But alas, as they say, “tomorrow never comes” and the failure rate of New Year’s resolutions, unfortunately, appears to be quite high. And so vices seem never to get eradicated, and if anything, the delusional notion that at a future date all will be made okay perhaps contributes to its exacerbation.

And clearly it is not only resolutions made in the New Year and by individuals, which fail. Nations at different times, on different dates and venues have made all sorts of vows, promises, decisions and accords. The United Nations came into existence for the very purpose of dissuading countries from going to war. But has its interventions (or at times its lack thereof) had any meaningful impact? Has it really been successful? Why are there so many wars in different parts of the world?

In fact, not just in different parts of the world far away from us. Conflict has now crept up literally in our backyard. Bangladesh, our friendly neighbor since 1971, is now demonstrating diplomatic tensions with India and that is not good news as we move towards the New Year.

Let me hope, if naively, that this tension is just an exacerbation before a calm. This December, I hope we use the intervening time before January, to make promises that peace will definitely prevail in 2025.

I hope that nations vow to end war. And I hope that once and for all, they keep that promise.

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