Dude Hyderabadi thinks 2006 was an year to remember. Heartcrossings receives a greeting, ’subject to clarification or withdrawal’, that conveys

‘best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.’

G.V.Krishnan remembers some ‘notable’ greeting cards he had received:

“Thank God It’s New Year,” said an illustrated ‘greetings’ card I got from a Times of India colleague on Jan One in 1998. The illustration showed Laxman’s Common Man on the run, getting away from the precipice of a plateau, as fast as his dhoti would permit. The precipice was crumbling round the edges. The plateau symbolized 1998. Somewhere in the dark valley down below, amid a clutter of debris, was a partly visible signpost marked 1997, from where our Common Man had trekked his way up and clambered on to the plateau.

Jawahara Saidullah views the arrival of the new year with mixed feelings but hopes ‘I can work towards what is yet to come’:

Bringing in the new year, 2007, in India is strange. This coming year bisects my life in two. I will be exactly double the age I was when I arrived in the US. I was young, scared and excited and so desperately missing India. It’s not like it is for newcomers now, with the Internet and cheap phone calls. To those of us who arrived in the late 80’s and early 90’s it was a complete shift. We wrote letters and awaited them eagerly. Phone calls were still too expensive to make regularly, especially on TA salaries.

Btw, her ‘first novel The Burden of Foreknowledge will be published by Roli Books in the first quarter of 2006.’ iLeher makes 10 predictions for the year 2007:

Broadband growth in India will continue to disappoint by not showing an exponential growth. [...] Airline tax cuts will boost travel industry further in 2007. [...] Introductions of DVR in Indian markets with onset of Set Top boxes and DTH – people will no longer have to sit through painful ads to watch their favorite soaps.

Bharani reflects on what 2006 has been for him, personally and wants to ’share a quote that I read recently to take forward to year 2007′:

We ignorant of ourselves,
Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers
Deny us for good; so find we profit
By losing our prayers.