What is new about the new year?
Hosa Varsha Eve. New Year Eve. Enu hosaadu? The clock changes its hat. The calendar flips its moustache. But the stage remains the same. Ade pañca-bhūta . Ade kāla . Earth does not update its software. Fire does not download a new patch. Water flows with the same old confidence it had yesterday. So haagadare… enu hosaadu? Not the universe. Not time. Not even our problems, which are loyal enough to RSVP every year. What becomes new is something subtler. Bhāva. Dr̥ṣṭikoṇa. Vision. A year becomes hosa only when the lens through which we look becomes nava-naveena . Otherwise it is just the same old wheel doing polite rotations, like a bored bull at a village oil press. The Gītā whispers this politely in Chapter 15. The universe exists in layers , like a cosmic mille-feuille. What we see is not all that is. “tataḥ padam parimārga-tavyam” — seek that further step, the higher footing. New Year, then, is not about fireworks. It is about climbing vision , one rung higher. From surface s...