Its 2077, the Nepali New Year. Yesterday was New Year’s Eve. The city that wouldn’t be able to sleep due to the lights, music, and people are devoid of the very thing. The wind growled a little louder through the empty streets. The asphalt wasn’t made for silence, but it might be a good listener after all.

The dates have been slowly erased from my memory. It’s as though we are living one week to another. It’s just yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That’s all it seems to matter. But the calendars are changing. A new date has come as we watch the sun rays enter through our window panes — locked down.

The question I have is: how shall we greet each other this new year? When I dial the number of my friends, what shall I tell them? When I type messages across the screen, what shall I tell the recipient? The wishes seem to be sucked out, empty like the streets we look upon.

H-A-P-P-Y seems the last word on our lists. Then what shall I fill the void with? Adjectives have run dry as I read news across the world. It started during one Lunar New Year and ravaged the world in 100 days. We have reached another year elsewhere, but the war doesn’t seem to stop. The roads aren’t easy, neither are they defined.

Prized inventory systems have broken down, forecasting has been challenged to it’s bones, political systems are at their brink.

What if, what if, are two words that hit like a hammer. But there are no what ifs. It is just what it is, and what remains is human resilience ricocheting off the walls of history.

What we do know is this will be over. And then what we do know is we must change; what we do know is we cannot forget. We pray to come out not just alive, but also more accountable, understanding, and respectful of the world we must create. The virus has exposed our current world with its demonic fangs ready to pierce through the already thinned skin of humanity.

But demons can be beaten. And we try. Warriors worldwide are armed as we place our faith over science.

Together we try; together we pray; together we survive.

I shall, therefore, not wish you a happy new year, I shall wish you a stronger new year, a wiser new year, a fighter’s new year, a believer’s new year, a knowledgeable new year, a just new year, a more equal new year, a safer new year. A new year we will never again take for granted. And maybe somewhere down the line if we did all these and more, we’d one day again have a happier new year.

Till then, stay safe.