{"id":3879,"date":"2016-03-15T12:35:35","date_gmt":"2016-03-15T07:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3879"},"modified":"2016-03-15T12:35:35","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T07:05:35","slug":"mumbais-new-year-tradition-chokeslamming-old-mans-effigy-ablaze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3879","title":{"rendered":"Mumbai\u2019s Strange New Year Tradition: Chokeslamming an Old Man\u2019s Effigy and Setting Him Ablaze"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A<\/span><\/p><\/div>

t any other time of the year, the sight of a fat old man sitting in a plastic chair on the roof of my building watchman\u2019s cabin would make me call the cops. But things are different in December. As the year draws to a close, and Christmas and <\/span>New Year<\/span><\/a> season is in full force, Santa Claus is not the only jolly old man coming to town. It\u2019s the Old Man of the Year an effigy only to be burnt at midnight on New Year\u2019s Eve to mark the ringing out of the old and the ringing in of the new.<\/span>\n\nIt was only a few years ago that I learnt that this was a uniquely Mumbai tradition. Most of our New Year\u2019s rituals are fairly predictable. Some head to a <\/span>friend<\/span><\/a>\u2019s house for a drunken bash, others to a club where the DJ plays the most awful mashups on smoke-filled and sweaty dance floors. Some of us do the brave\/foolhardy thing of heading out somewhere outside city, to celebrate and say, \u201cGetting stuck in traffic is a custom I\u2019ve always followed.\u201d <\/span>\n\nBut setting the Old Man of the Year ablaze is something out of the ordinary, beyond the typical booze-fuelled New Year\u2019s Party that can too often become an indistinct blur in your memory. There ain\u2019t no party like an Old Man party because an Old Man party gets lit.<\/span>\n\nThe Old Man is nothing but a stuffed figure who sits on a chair all alone, with a glass of his favourite drink and a cigarette dangling from his lips, overlooking the <\/span>society<\/span><\/a> building where he lives. Commonly referred to as Old Man or Old Man Gloom, the tradition of effigy burning originates in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and dates back to 1924. In Indian communities, this tradition is observed mostly along the Konkan coast, from Mumbai to <\/span>Goa<\/span><\/a>. The idea behind the Old Man is that many see the New Year as an infant, born on January 1, who turns old in a year\u2019s time and goes away at the end of the year, carrying with him the burdens of the passing year. The symbolic burning of the Old Man represents the chain of death and birth, the passage of time, and the old and the new. When we got together to set the Old Man alight, we were burning away all the sorrows and gloominess of the year gone by.<\/span>\n\n

Maybe this year I\u2019ll be one of the adults standing by and watching as the kids chokeslam poor ol\u2019 Old Man.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nGiven the philosophical similarities behind the burning of the Old Man and the Holika Dahan pooja, you\u2019ll forgive seven-year-old me for thinking it was \u201cChristian Holi\u201d. I wanted to incorporate pichkaris and gulaal into the festivities, and even suggested it once, only to be laughed at by the elders. <\/span>\n\nIn reality, there was a lot more Diwali than Holi in the celebrations \u2013 along with the straw and dry leaves we stuffed the Old Man with, we also threw in any leftover <\/span>crackers from Diwali<\/span><\/a> to add some sparks to the proceedings. The entire process of creating our Old Man would take us three to four days. While most of the old men were fat, some buildings made slim ones. Some, I remember, even had families, complete with a wife, and two kids! However one thing which united them all, was the mask of poor <\/span>Santa Claus<\/span><\/a>, whose jolly visage inevitably became the default face for the Old Man, and ended up in flames every year. Santa Dahan. <\/span>\n\nAt the society\u2019s New Year\u2019s Eve party, we\u2019d spend the night jigging away to the tunes of <\/span>Bollywood songs<\/span><\/a>, Rasna, and games of musical chairs, nail the donkey, and the eternal favourite, housie. But by 11.30 pm, the anticipation would build. The kids would be allowed a free run at the Old Man. This involved mostly trying all the wrestling moves on the effigy \u2013 my favorite being the chokeslam. Other kids would kick, punch, and hit the guy, giving vent to all their frustrations built up from strict parents and stern teachers all year long. At the finale, watching the Old Man go up in a blaze of flames and fireworks after being doused in kerosene, we always marvelled at our handiwork. <\/span>\n\nThough it\u2019s technically just a stuffed figure that\u2019s only around for a week or so, seeing that familiar old man back on my watchman\u2019s cabin\u2019s roof brought back a wave of nostalgia. Maybe this year I\u2019ll be one of the adults standing by and watching as the kids chokeslam poor ol\u2019 Old Man. I may not be the one doing the stuffing and setting alight, but I\u2019ll be there to watch the embers fly up to the sky, as the new year approaches us with the promise of better times to come (maybe the long-awaited arrival of <\/span>acche din<\/span><\/a>, perhaps). <\/span>\n\n

The symbolic burning of the Old Man represents the chain of death and birth, the passage of time, and the old and the new.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nPerhaps you should find your own version of Burning Man in your <\/span>neighbourhood<\/span><\/a> too. Who knows, maybe with all the negativity being taken away by the Old Man, the new year may just bring in something positive for you?<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the end of 2019 is upon us, I think I\u2019ll give year-end parties a miss. This year, I\u2019ll go back to celebrating how we used to \u2013 by setting ablaze an effigy in the shape of an old dude and Santa\u2019s mask, that represents the year gone by. This uniquely Mumbai-Goa tradition is our version of the Burning Man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":319,"featured_media":3880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[141,7209,3657,1236,6805,186,904,80,3636,3626,7210,7211,5532],"class_list":["post-3879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-bollywood","tag-burning-man","tag-celebration","tag-christmas","tag-crackers","tag-diwali","tag-goa","tag-mumbai","tag-new-year","tag-nye","tag-old-man","tag-santa-claus","tag-tradition"],"yoast_head":"\nMumbai\u2019s Strange New Year Tradition: Chokeslamming an Old Man\u2019s Effigy and Setting Him Ablaze<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As the end of 2019 is upon us, I think I\u2019ll give year-end parties a miss. 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