Lifestyle: Year 2000: Millennium Madness

Weddings and child births are put off, the rich head for the Pacific and the faithful wait for Kalki as epochal goofiness touches India.

I Was There! Where Were You?
Everyone wants to be any place but here when the sun sets on the second millennium. The favourites: Khajuraho, the Pyramids, the Pacific

Epochs are rare. So when they show up, people like to make the most of them. Aparna Vasudevan, 27, is no exception. Her immediate desire in life is simple: to have a child. But she's realised she lives at a time when not just a century is ending; she lives on the doorstep of millennial change, only the second time since Jesus Christ was born in 1 A.D. So Vasudevan, an office secretary in Bangalore, is trying to time her child for the coming of the year 2000.

Fakruddin Takulla, 60, began planning for the start of humanity's third millennium 25 years ago. Takulla, a trader from Mumbai's Crawford market bought a ticket in 1974 -- in the days when tickets could be booked indefinitely in advance -- on the Delhi-bound Rajdhani Express for a measly Rs 120. The ticket, worth Rs 1,300 today, will take him to Delhi aboard the superfast express on January 1, 2000. "This is one ride that I do not want to go fast," says Takulla with a smile. "I want it to go as slow as possible."

It is a very human wish: to slow down a memorable moment, to stretch something that can't physically be stretched. In terms of cosmic existence, the coming of the new millennium is enormously less than nothing, less than an eye wink in history, a nano blip in time and space, an infinitesimal fraction of a fraction of time. Yet, the second that marks the end of 1,000 years is a time with magical connotations. So the dawn of the new millennium is engendering feverish feelings -- happiness, joy, even wild warnings of Armageddon -- around the world. India, already a land of five millennia -- at least -- is slowly being pulled into the epoch's excitable embrace.

To many, there are serious, even apocalyptic, implications to the start of the 2000s. "Remember this is the age of Kalki (the tenth and last avatar of Vishnu)," intones Pandit Om Prakash, a priest in a south Delhi temple. "The mahayudh, the great battle, between truth and evil will begin, and if evil gains the upper hand, only Kalki can save us." Other religions also contain within their tenets the same good-versus-evil theme at millennium's end. The Internet is mushrooming with sites devoted to repentance -- and salvation. "The second coming of Christ includes the rapture of the saints, which is our blessed hope, followed by the visible return of Christ with his saints to reign on Earth for 1,000 years," declares one of the sites.

Into The Sun
Perched on the International Date Line, a select few will catch the first rays of 2000

Soothsayers abound. What they predict depends greatly on who they are. A senior bureaucrat sees "expressways" in the millennium, as wild as bureaucrats get. Bejan Daruwalla, garrulous guru of the zodiac, is a pinch wilder. Computers will "make love but not war" he said at a packed auditorium in Delhi recently. Daruwalla also predicted first contact -- from now until 2008. You and me, he mysteriously revealed, "will find out we are not alone in the universe".

To those about to marry or have a baby, millennium's landfall is a golden opportunity to make the mundane exotic. Mothers want to have the "00" tagged on to their child's birth date, others want to do the same for their wedding date. It isn't surprising then that places like Cyclone, a disco in Mumbai, gets at least 10 calls a day from couples who want to get married there as close to epoch's end as they can.

But for those who look at December 31, 1999, as the opportunity to have the most notable party since the Last Supper, the question they must answer is the same resounding over the world: Where will you be when the clocks strike 12.01 a.m., January 1, 2000? For those who can afford it, as far away from here as possible. "I will go to Vieques Island, near Puerto Rico, with my dog Skipper," gushes Arthi Muthaiah, daughter of Chennai auto tycoon M.C.C. Muthaiah. On a mountain on this island halfway around the world, looking down at the sea, she intends to welcome the millennium. Mishal Verma, a director with mtv in Mumbai, plans to be in the general vicinity, but underwater, off the coast of the Caribbean Island of Aruba.

The Pacific is the destination of choice for those who can afford it. It is here that the first rays of 2000 will hit the earth. The first true landfall of the year 2000 will occur on the Pacific island of Tonga, just west of the International Date Line. For a few thousand dollars you could get aboard a handful of cruise liners that will position themselves here and be the first to sail into the first day of the next millennium.

Millennium Mix Up
Party on December 31, 1999?
Sorry, you're a year too early.

The Controversy
The world believes 2000 is the start of the third set of 1,000 years after Christ. But the sticklers say the third millennium actually begins on January 1, 2001.
The Facts
Years in the Gregorian calendar are counted from A.D. 1, a year after the birth of Christ. Thus the first millennium comprised the years A.D. 1 through 1000. So, the third millennium will begin in A.D. 2001.
The Reality
It doesn't matter. Nothing will derail the worldwide celebrations, from luxury cruises to common street parties on December 31, 1999-January 1, 2000. Jumping the gun? No problem, party again next year.

If you desire more unorthodox pursuits show up at the remote Chatham Islands and watch the millennium's first horse race at 00:59 a.m. Or if you are fit enough, be a participant in "2000 First to the Sun", a 1,000-km bicycle ride on New Zealand's North Island, from Auckland to Gisborne, one of the first cities to see the millennial sun. Or if you are rich enough, sign up for a $75,000 flight through the world's time zones on the Concorde with planned stops in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Sydney, Hong Kong, Masai Mara (Kenya), Cairo, and yes, Delhi.

In India, the options are a little more mundane, but as sought after. Hotels and vacation spots are filling up, and the best ones are already sold out. Goa? Not a chance. Sold out solid bidu; hotels have stopped accepting bookings after December 1. Many have already lined up parties on the beach, on a boat in the Mandovi, on the lush hills. Rajasthan? Most of the major properties -- the lake palaces, the palace hotels -- are booked. Tour companies are pitching luxury tents, even organising hot-air balloon rides for the droves of tourists from India and abroad who want to say they were at some place exotic, doing something exotic.

Another prime destination is Khajuraho. Coincidentally, the temple of love celebrates 1,000 years of its own existence with the coming of the new millennium. Amidst recreations of ancient Indian civilisations and ancient Indian cuisine, January 1, 2000 will be ushered in by maestros like Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan rendering special compositions as the sun rises on the new era.

If Indians find the draw of an exotic foreign locale to usher in 2000 irresistible, so do foreigners India. "We have been flooded with inquiries from abroad," says Akshay Kumar, general manager (operations), Mercury Himalayan Explorations. "Everyone wants to know what we have to offer." Obviously, it hasn't escaped anyone's mind that this is a time to make a killing. Like in the rest of the world, prices in India are skyrocketing for the duration of the millennium's dawn. Prices are twice to eight times the normal rates.

This frenzy of activity is a little strange, because the millennium isn't actually ending on December 31, 1999. Technically speaking, the end of the millennium is December 31, 2000 (see box). The two dates have sparked some serious confusion worldwide. The Chinese government even appointed a panel of scientists to clarify when the millennium really ends. But to the world at large, the millennium mix-up simply means an excuse to party twice instead of once.

There will be no dearth of parties to attend. Festivals worldwide are starting early and going on right through to 2001, when the purists will mark the start of the third millennium of modern history. Ushering the millennium on a budget? Party with the masses. Among the major venues of street parties: London's bridges, Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, New York's Times Square and Paris' Champs Elysees, Delhi's Connaught Place, Bangalore's M.G. Road. In Egypt, French musician Jean-Michael Jearre has been hired to compose a new opera to be performed at the pyramids, starting at sunset December 31, 1999, and lasting until sunrise the following day. There are plans to affix a gold-encased capstone on the Great Pyramid, making it whole again, if only for the night.

And what of its desi cousin, the Taj Mahal? Officially, it isn't clear but an organisation called The Millennium Society in Washington D.C. is sponsoring 23 simultaneous celebrations around the world. That includes the Great Wall of China, the Acropolis and the Taj -- all of them will be linked via satellite to create a "round-the-globe", "round-the-clock" welcome to 2000.