A friend who we spent our New Year's eve with, was asked by another friend whether he was doing anything special on that day. When my friend replied in the negative, his friend nodded wisely and said, "Obviously, Y2K." My friend was puzzled. His friend said, "Wife and 2 kids". Then there was this ad for a Y2K compliant washing powder for clothes. And one for Y2K compatible dot-matrix printers. And yet another one advertising its Y3K compatibility, "because we care for you!"

My software developer has no time till the 15th because he is busy making money, fixing Y2K problems at 6-7 different customer sites every day. All he does is to insert in the PC, a card that proclaims the PC to be Y2K compliant, despite the fact that most of the PCs are Pentiums installed in the last 2-3 years. When I asked him why he was doing this, he said that it was not his problem that people were dumb and if he didn't do it someone else would.

A whole lot of people have made a whole lot of money fixing dates.

A whole lot of people have also made a whole lot of money riding the Millenium bandwagon. And these people will not stop; the next year will see an entirely new marketing juggernaut focussed on the "Real Millenium" or the "True Millenium".

I had decided to resist this hype and hoopla; we were going to spend a quiet evening at home with three friends. Yet, on the 30th when I went to buy some Bacardi, I could not resist buying a champagne wannabe called the Millenium special, which I actually popped on the dot at midnight. It wasn't worth the Rs 2500 (60$) that I paid for it, considering that it tasted much better when mixed with cognac (Jimmy's Special). I also discovered an amazingly dry cocktail that night, a Fifty-Fifty, which consists of equal parts of dry gin and dry vermouth. I guess I can take up bartending as an alternative occupation.

I wasn't the only one who gave in to the Millenium hype though. Another friend bought an expensive cigar, which too was dutifully lit up at midnight along with the champagne. And, that was it. A quiet New Year's eve with three friends, two kids and two about-to-be-born ones, samosas, paneer, tequila shots, a letdown of a champagne and a cigar. And back to work at 8.00AM in the morning on a day when surprisingly, not just the patients, but even my staff were on time.

I have no New Year resolutions to talk about, simply because I am incapable of making such lists. And I prefer not to get my hopes up about this world of ours improving. Many people have been writing and talking about their hopes and aspirations for a better and more peaceful world. I don't think the world is going to change so soon, not for the better at least. Yes, from the point of view of technology, the new century will probably be an exciting place to live in. Yet, the rich will still remain rich and the poor will still be poor and Mumbai will still stink and the slum dwellers will still shit on the railway tracks and 2 million people will still cram themselves into the local trains everyday to go to work and our politicians will still be idiotic and stupid, and our airports will still resemble glorified cowsheds. And the Kashmir problem and terrorism are unlikely to go away. And as long as human beings covet, so will nations covet and fight, when what they covet is not easily available or belongs to someone else.

We gave in to the terrorists' demand on New Year's eve and three militants were released in exchange for 157 people, who had been kept hostage on an Indian Airlines plane that had been hijacked in Nepal and taken to Khandahar in Afghanistan. I do not know what the compulsions of my government were in giving in to their demands, but the man released, Maulana Azhar will probably plan the deaths of many more people than were on the plane, in the years to come. I understand the plight of the families whose kith and kin were on board, but that is the price we pay for living in this world and I believe that the government should not have given in.

This is what I will remember about this New Year's eve. Sipping a Jimmy's Special, watching the hostage-release drama and hoping that in a youth-obsessed world, 35-year olds on the threshold of a new century do not become obsolete.

A world of honest and fabulous people. A world of brilliant celebrations, big and small.

Not that I was worried ...

Well, maybe just a little. A year ago, right after the very last new year's celebration of the old century, I did allow myself to listen to the doomsayers and negativoes, and I even considered that they might have a point. So I ran out to one of those big superstores we have around here that give you a flat-bed trolley at the door and allow you to buy stuff in quantity. I confess that I bought a few secret cases of things. A case of bottled water. A case of evaporated milk. A case of Dinty Moore.

That last item is a type of stew in a can. Good enough to eat cold, with a fork, if your sources of cooking fuel have suddenly dried up. And then, once I bought these things, I began to feel worse about the situation, not better. I tried to tell family members, all of whom live in ultra-cold climates, to prepare. They laughed, of course. They always laugh at my schemes, by the way. But I continued to worry and think about preparations should the worst happen when the numbers rolled over.

I started saving every single gallon jug of milk that we emptied. I washed them out and then stored them in plastic garbage bags in certain interstices and crevices of my house. They take up a lot of space, emotional as well as physical. I began to feel as if I had a huge depressing secret -- that I would be the only one on my block to have water should the bad times come all of a sudden. Plus, I even stashed away a few jugs of common household bleach. (It's supposed to keep the water pure.) Can't be too careful if the world is coming to an end.

Luckily, the empty jug collection was as crazy as I got. My research into the problem led me to the obvious conclusion that a lot of people were making a lot of money in the fear and loathing industry, and I've never felt very comfortable among the overtly righteous. And besides, I didn't have enough extra money to buy the necessary gas generator, camp lanterns, wheat grinders, elaborate first-aid kits, and automatic weapons that were part of the whole survival package, were you to take it seriously.

Instead, by about May or June, I slowly began to break into my own meager supplies ... and for the most flimsy of reasons. If an entertainment-industry client came by for a business meeting, I stole into the bottled water supply. Show-biz types never drink tap. If I ran out of fresh milk or wanted to make a creamier cream soup, I hit the evaporated-milk stash. I was a kid during the "duck-and-cover" atom-bomb drills and we played bomb shelter games with neighbor kids and cans of Carnation and a church key and I've subsequently developed quite a hankering for milk right out of a can.

Several more cans just disappeared in the night when I got thirsty. And I tried living with the Zen concept of what will be, will be. Take your chances with the rest of the fiddling grasshoppers and try not worry so much, so far ahead. Trust human nature and the skill of old COBOL programmers. And know how to read the early signs and portents.

Miracle of miracles -- we got through this one with all systems intact. The stew is still hidden in my secret place, along with the bleach, but they'll both be gone before too much longer. I've tons of laundry to do now that the holidays are over and the party I gave last week is just a pleasant memory. We're having a run of windy, chilly California winter nights, and I'll certainly warm up a nice can or two of Dinty and have a nice snack. And that will be that.

I can now revert to feeling slightly guilty at our mad excess here in the states and our cheap electricity, plentiful and clean (enough) running water and indoor plumbing. Our limitless fuel supplies, the efficient garbage pickups each Tuesday morning. We have a lovely life, and I think more people appreciate that fact this week than last week. Last week we were looking square in the face of chaos, and we didn't blink.

We lit a sparkler and uncorked some bubbles and when morning came round, chaos was still in her cage, neatly bound by our technology. Welcome to our millennium. Make yourself comfy. Aren't we a wonderful people?