Call us spoilsports, party poopers, or anti-fun, but we refuse to get goose-haired or drunk over a date, and we don't particularly relish the idea of being forced to party at media-gun-point. Nor do we want to enhance the company of some South Asian English-educated executive types who are sure to make a mess of themselves between 31 December 1999 and 1 January 2000.
Besides loving our sleep, the editors of Himal like the majority of South Asians celebrate, live and sleep by a different set of calendars. The calendar of the sequel Pope, Gregory XIII touches our lives but skin deep, in economics and administration, but our cultural being is ruled by calendars that are more homegrown. They may be a bit unscientific, relying as they tend to on the lunar rather than the solar, but they have proved quite sufficient these past several millennia to call forth a Dasain or a Dussehra, or a Pongal or a Karva Chouth.
On another level, we could go into the metaphysical bit about how time can't be measured by calendars, but that's better left to the poets and particle physicists. The 21st century, by some of our calendars, is old hat, while by some, like the Islamic lunar one, it's a good six centuries away; the Tibetan Buddhist calendar is now running 2126, while the widely used Hindu Vikram Sambat is in the year 2056. Meanwhile, the Nepal Sambat struggles gamely along, tortoise-like, at year 1120.
How can we call archaic or useless these calendars which rule the cultural lives of more than 90 percent of South Asia's 1.3 billion people? Most certainly can't, dear English reader. That's why we would hate to run into those back-slapping execs on 31 December 1999/1 January 2000 (Gregorian), with their borrowed drawl: "Hey man, welcome to the 21st century."