2023 reasons to hope again

Fireworks seen from the rooftop deck of my condo in Bangkok

My plan had been to turn in early, skipping the countdowns and insane hooting, and just aim for a good night's sleep as 2022 yielded to 2023. Instead, with 10 minutes to midnight, I decided on a whim to go up 26 floors to the rooftop deck of my condo. Bangkok usually has two spectacular mall fireworks displays, one at IconSiam on the river and the other at CentralWorld in the business district. Both are visible from my building, along with a panoramic 360-degree view of the rest of the city.

As 2022 ended, I saw something that I have not seen in my 16 years in this city - fireworks were going off on hundreds of rooftops all over the sprawl of Bangkok. From my height and distance, they looked like twinkling stars and small comets. The city was twinkling, almost as if happy about something.

The real reason why this sight surprised me so much is that January 1 usually means nothing to Thais; their new year starts in April with the festival of Songkran. Yet it seemed everyone was up and out, ringing in 2023. The air was luminous with an effervescent joy.

I too had been feeling optimistic about 2023, filled with an unreasonable mellow glow and the conviction that this year would somehow not be so bad, a certainty that something better might be coming around the corner.

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So - do we have reasons to feel hope and optimism in 2023? Is there really a kind of hush all over the world?

The last two years have sucked. No one disagrees with me on this. A virus that just wouldn't stop had everyone holed up in their houses. Meanwhile, worldwide, it has felt like people had surrendered whatever sense they had left after years of deceptions and pernicious half-truths from politicians, marketers and influencers.

Authoritarians - Bolsonaro, Xi Jinping, a buffoon called Boris Johnson, a grifter called Trump and at least one whose name may not be said - have been laughing from their rooftops, firing machine gun blanks into the air. While the world watched, a land-grabbing Russian strongman called Putin decided to take - just like that - Ukraine. The world went into war again. The word nuclear was uttered.

We heard that democracy was in danger, that the planet was doomed, that economies would crash, that lies would be the new truths, that this was what the beginning of the end looked like.

I have felt resignation and rage of people at parties and coffee shops and the chilling silence of narcissistic leaders who knew that the best way to nurture violence and bigotry was to look the other way when it happened.

We have watched the media choke on its own indignation and outrage, and then meekly swallow spit and subside into self-censorship.

So a good question here would be - why are my friends in India filled with unexpected hope? And why were the rooftops twinkling all over Bangkok?

It looks like 2022 was the year when the ordinary, overwhelmed, downtrodden, frustrated masses of planet earth got tired of being tired, fed up of being bullied. I took note first when the Brazilian douchebag Jair Bolsonaro, the president who decided to set the Amazon forest on fire and sell the trees for profit, was kicked out of power by popular vote. Unbelievable.

In the USA's recent midterm elections, voters made it clear that they had had enough of a bullying ex-president who lied at random about everything and incited murderous violence to stay in power. In state after state, Republicans, especially those backed by Trump, fell like dominoes.

In Iran, where anger waits patiently for decades and then comes out like a tsunami, women and children took to the streets - not for days or weeks, but months, demanding nothing less than complete regime change and freedom from the ruling theocrats. The Morality Police with their guns and hangings could not stop them.

China's millions stood up and said no to one of the most sinister people in power today, Xi Jinping. No more Zero-COVID and more endless, punitive lockdowns. The world's most populous nation chose being ravaged by a virus over being pushed about by their heavy-handed supreme leader.

Putin could not crush Ukraine. The mighty Russia stands whipped and wet and growling, while Ukrainians refuse to be ruled.

In India, a young man decided to walk for unity from Kanyakumari to Kashmir - and the Bharat Jodo walk has turned into a magnet for people of every cloth and colour, caste and creed, who have had enough of division and lies. The sheer momentum and size of the Gandhian movement growing before our eyes, apparently beyond politics, parties and ego, is breathtaking.

I am reminded of Andy Dufresne, the prison philosopher in the movie The Shawshank Redemption, who said: "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."

What if we have indeed just turned a corner?

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com

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