A new Year could signify many things in a person’s life, or not. Over the years of sustained, media bombardment of imported fads about the significance of the passing year, one may imagine that people around the city have bought into the yearly ritual of making resolutions. Celebrity columns every year list out New Year promises glitterati made to themselves and didn’t keep. But the common man on the street, it seems, is a bit more cynical, or they understand that it is small, steady, daily efforts that bring about that change.

For Kamla Ganesh, a lecturer of Sociology at the Mumbai University, resolutions are not yearly whip-ups on the days leading to New Year’s Eve. “It is not possible to implement your resolution a 100 per cent. So I don’t aim too big. For me it is about smaller things, like deciding to walk every day of the week, so that even if I walk five days a week, I feel like I’ve achieved something.”

The smaller things in life really are the greater concern for most people. For Radio City jockey Love Guru, New Year’s resolutions are “frivolous promises made to be broken”. Resolutions for him are about breaking out of patterns and doing things one has always wanted to do, but never did them. “I decided that over the next two months, I will spend more time on film scripts that I’ve been working on for a while now and finally finish them off. I also started to lend more of a hand around the house after complaints that I wasn’t doing enough,” he confesses. “It simply is about telling yourself that you’re going to make an effort, and you don’t need a specific day to tell yourself that.” The RJ speaks from experience, having dealt with numerous people who approach him on the show with their love-related problems. People change when they want to change, or maybe when they’re ready to change.

One man who was more than ready for change was 64-year-old Stanley Quilley who faced alcohol addiction for nearly a decade, and finally got out of it when his brother enrolled him at the Kripa Foundation in Pune for rehabilitation. He’s learnt from his experience the need for a strong support system to encourage the efforts to change. “I was an alcoholic since I was 18. I went on to fall in love with a woman who said that she would marry me on the condition that I give up drinking. I did exactly as she asked. After 22 years of our marriage, she left me. I went straight back to the bar.” Quilley lost all control over his life and finally came to live on the streets before being admitted into rehab. He is now a counselor at Kripa.