"So, what of next year's resolutions?", I heard my friend ask the other day and found myself stuck in a quiet storm, stirring the ache of all the changes I'd wished for but never lived this year. New days, new weeks, new months, new years, how often I've chased the illusion of 'new', convinced that everything would start from the very beginning only to find myself, each day, pleading for the following day, begging each week for another week. How dearly I've celebrated the turning of each year, like prophets ushering in salvation, only to discover the freshness of the same calendar fading by February, the corners dog-eared, and promises so solemnly sworn becoming ghosts lingering in the silence of unkempt rooms. As if the trees that shed their twigs in autumn do not grow the same leaves with the same roots in spring, as if when flipping pages in a book, the story never retains its plot, as if the mere change of a night could unshackle the chains of a lifelong sorrow.
Shayan Das, New Year's Resolutions