“They are coming,” my mother excitedly announced.
The carousers started singing as they approached our house. I could distinguish my father’s voice singing with the crowd as I waited at the veranda with trepidation, unsure if our old house could withstand the animated crowd.
Our house creaked, trembled and shook with the stamping of the revelers as they sang “Kasadya Ning Taknaa”. This crowd of merrymakers started the traditional welcoming of the New Year three hours before midnight. They sang, swayed, stamped their feet, raised their arms and hugged; undisguised expressions of thanksgivings of the previous year’s blessings and unabashed wishes for a fruitful new year. Ever thankful of being alive, the revelers’ gaiety were unaffected by the low price of copra and the high cost of living. The spirit of tuba and other alcoholic drinks had fired up their spirit. But after more than three hours of revelry, most of the merrymakers, many of past prime age, were drunk and exhausted they could hardly stand erect. Some had to hold unto others for support.
“New Year, New Life . . .” The inebriated merrymakers continued singing and their boisterous voices floated in the air, which two hours earlier at the stroke of midnight, was shattered by ear-shattering cracks of firecrackers and blasts of dynamites.
Many years ago, when I was still in my elementary school, a drunken soldier discharged a smoke grenade during a neighborhood new-year party at the other side of the river. Many celebrants, some coming from our side of the river, suffered skin burns. Others were injured during the stampede.
A new year always promised a better life ahead. It did not happen last year or the previous years. But since life was at the ebb, there was no other course but up. This was the shared outlook of the carousers who fairly represented the demographic profile of the community – landowners, tenants, farmers, employees, unemployed, housewives, young, old, men and women.
We served biko and kinutir. The crowd left for the remaining few houses. Drunk and exhausted, my father stayed in the house and was promptly asleep. It was past two o’clock in the morning. I had been home bound for two months of convalescence from vertigo on the new year of 1966.
Kinutir – a punch of coconut wine. cocoa and egg.
