I wish January 1 was a holiday in all countries. This is not only so that people can sleep after a New Year's party, but I see the New Year's Day as an international festival. It's a day that is celebrated across all nations, races and religions. It does not matter if your New Year begins on Diwali or Al-Hijra, Jan 1 still remains the New year's Day.

Many of us do not know if the sun actually finishes rotation of 365 and one fourth day around the sun on December 1, but for all of us the number of the year changes after this year. Every one of us fumbles while writing the date in January and many of us by now might have already ended up writing 2008 instead of 2009. The rich as well as the poor celebrate the New Year. If not anything much at least a silent prayer is said on this day.

 This New Year's day someone told me that this day should be called National Integration Day. How true. I witnessed a party this year on the rooftops of one of the apartment buildings. The residents included Indians as well as foreigners. They together cooked, set up fire for barbeque and danced to welcome the New Year. Here all belonged to the event. This feeling is sometimes absent when people organize party during a religious function. For instance if a Christmas party is organized some may feel that it is a Christian festival and do not feel belonged like the way it is on Jan 1.

 Well, still now I have not heard the Kannada Rakshana Vedike, Bajrang Dal or Shiv Sena protest that Jan 1 should not be celebrated. What can prove it more than the mum of the moral police. The ones who do not lose an opportunity to bring divides, too celebrate this day.