2008.
As of April, it's been 20 years since we hauled ass back to Bombay. 20 years!
That sounds like an obnoxiously long time! And yet it feels so...recent!
I can't really wrap my head around it. Largely, I think, because of the fact that I think of something that happened 20 YEARS AGO as part of 'recent' history.
It's somewhat unnerving because it brings into sharp focus something that I've been trying to ignore for a while - namely, the whole business about growing old..er!
All your life, you pour so much time and energy into the concept of 'growing up' - either trying to accomplish it successfully of trying to avoid it entirely, only to realize that somewhere along the line it happened anyway, with little or no help from you. And sure enough, the words 'spring chicken' and 'not' have been playing in an endless loop in my head lately. And yet, I'm confused. What I want to know is - Is it over? Am I done?
How do you tell? I mean, is it one defining moment? Is there a 'PING!' like when the buzzer on the oven timer goes off and you know for sure that the cake you were baking is done...and is, therefore, ready to begin its irrevocable journey from celebratory confection to compost.
Does some cosmic or karmic timer similarly go 'PING!' at a predetermined moment and for oh-so-brief a moment you bask in the realisation that you've entirely grown up - only to immediately thereafter begin that unrelenting decline into old age?
I can't make out. I feel ancient some times. I have old people complaints now.
My feet hurt. My knees are bitching. I'm have become intimate with the phenomenon of the sleepless night. I have headaches...constantly.
And I rant! I actually pontificate. I sometimes sit outside of myself and watch as I channel my dad or grandfather just as they're going into one of their interminable gripes. I am ashamed to say that it is entirely possible for me to have, at some point or the other, begun sentences with 'back in '91...' or 'when I was your age...' And as if that weren't enough, I am also guilty of using the phrase 'going to hell in a handbasket' with regard to any number of mind-numbingly banal subjects - traffic, the government, the state of Bombay city, the state of my hair, the grammar in text messages and on and on, ad nauseam.
And I worry. I worry about money - I worry about how much I'm spending and I worry about how much money I'm not making. I worry about paying my taxes. I worry about not paying my taxes. I worry about global warming and urban sprawl. I worry about not eating enough veggies and drinking too much coffee. And I worry about whether it's better to use paper or plastic. I worry that in the end it doesnt matter either way.
I worry that my chronic inability to find someone remotely interesting enough to go out for the ritual cup of coffee with, means that I'll eventually end up alone and my pathetic solitary income coupled with the skyrocketing cost of real estate will mean that I won't be able to afford to pay the going rate on house rents, let alone buy a place for myself and eventually I'll be forced to move in with my mother and then will have to get myself a terry-towel dressing robe and 6 cats, purely on principle (even though I can't stand cats or terry-towel.)
And then I worry that I may not live long enough to become the prototypical ageing spinster because what if the headaches I've been getting are actually an aneurism that I was too lazy to go and get checked out and when it explodes I'll be found dead, face down in an empty bucket. (Why a bucket? Because my sister once passed out in one when she was 10 and it makes for an interesting visual)and of course then I worry that when I'm found I'll most probably be wearing an embarassing pair of jammies...
...and then it occurs to me - I still wear jammies. And I'd sell my soul for a pair of fluffy bunny slippers; and Pez dispensers(candy included, of course.) And I still love candy - not fancy, 85% Brazilian cocoa content, grown up gourmet chocolate (which, I'll admit, has its merits) but boiled sugar, sticky sweet, colours of the rainbow, gets stuck in your teeth candy. And I still believe that it is mandatory to eat your skittles in even numbered colour combos. And I still do the thing, when you're shampooing your hair, and you make it stick up in peaks so you look like someone out of a Dick Tracy comic or Ace Ventura (yeah, like you don't!)
And I still like music with loud crunching guitars and I think world music can be kind of pretentious and that nice as classical music may be, I can never listen to it without imagining a bit of that classic Merrie Melodies cartoon action going on in my head. And I still get a snarky juvenile thrill when people swear in books or in song lyrics and so I may have graduated to reading Vonnegut, but I doubt I'll ever get myself to read books on self-improvement or the economy or by Milan Kundera just for pleasure. Why not Milan Kundera - cause Milan Kundera sucks ass!
And, oh yeah, I still use phrases like 'sucks ass.' And so I get to thinking, how grown up could I be?
Or is it that you never stop growing up...even when you've about finished growing old? Has adulthood become optional...who knows? The format has changed so much over the last few decades, it's hard to keep track of what we're supposed to be doing.
It might just be so much easier if life came with a manual or a script...so you'd know what you were supposed to do or say or what sense you were to make of the whole situation...like what am I doing writing this out at 2.30 a.m. when I have work tomorrow.
As of April, it's been 20 years since we hauled ass back to Bombay. 20 years!
That sounds like an obnoxiously long time! And yet it feels so...recent!
I can't really wrap my head around it. Largely, I think, because of the fact that I think of something that happened 20 YEARS AGO as part of 'recent' history.
It's somewhat unnerving because it brings into sharp focus something that I've been trying to ignore for a while - namely, the whole business about growing old..er!
All your life, you pour so much time and energy into the concept of 'growing up' - either trying to accomplish it successfully of trying to avoid it entirely, only to realize that somewhere along the line it happened anyway, with little or no help from you. And sure enough, the words 'spring chicken' and 'not' have been playing in an endless loop in my head lately. And yet, I'm confused. What I want to know is - Is it over? Am I done?
How do you tell? I mean, is it one defining moment? Is there a 'PING!' like when the buzzer on the oven timer goes off and you know for sure that the cake you were baking is done...and is, therefore, ready to begin its irrevocable journey from celebratory confection to compost.
Does some cosmic or karmic timer similarly go 'PING!' at a predetermined moment and for oh-so-brief a moment you bask in the realisation that you've entirely grown up - only to immediately thereafter begin that unrelenting decline into old age?
I can't make out. I feel ancient some times. I have old people complaints now.
My feet hurt. My knees are bitching. I'm have become intimate with the phenomenon of the sleepless night. I have headaches...constantly.
And I rant! I actually pontificate. I sometimes sit outside of myself and watch as I channel my dad or grandfather just as they're going into one of their interminable gripes. I am ashamed to say that it is entirely possible for me to have, at some point or the other, begun sentences with 'back in '91...' or 'when I was your age...' And as if that weren't enough, I am also guilty of using the phrase 'going to hell in a handbasket' with regard to any number of mind-numbingly banal subjects - traffic, the government, the state of Bombay city, the state of my hair, the grammar in text messages and on and on, ad nauseam.
And I worry. I worry about money - I worry about how much I'm spending and I worry about how much money I'm not making. I worry about paying my taxes. I worry about not paying my taxes. I worry about global warming and urban sprawl. I worry about not eating enough veggies and drinking too much coffee. And I worry about whether it's better to use paper or plastic. I worry that in the end it doesnt matter either way.
I worry that my chronic inability to find someone remotely interesting enough to go out for the ritual cup of coffee with, means that I'll eventually end up alone and my pathetic solitary income coupled with the skyrocketing cost of real estate will mean that I won't be able to afford to pay the going rate on house rents, let alone buy a place for myself and eventually I'll be forced to move in with my mother and then will have to get myself a terry-towel dressing robe and 6 cats, purely on principle (even though I can't stand cats or terry-towel.)
And then I worry that I may not live long enough to become the prototypical ageing spinster because what if the headaches I've been getting are actually an aneurism that I was too lazy to go and get checked out and when it explodes I'll be found dead, face down in an empty bucket. (Why a bucket? Because my sister once passed out in one when she was 10 and it makes for an interesting visual)and of course then I worry that when I'm found I'll most probably be wearing an embarassing pair of jammies...
...and then it occurs to me - I still wear jammies. And I'd sell my soul for a pair of fluffy bunny slippers; and Pez dispensers(candy included, of course.) And I still love candy - not fancy, 85% Brazilian cocoa content, grown up gourmet chocolate (which, I'll admit, has its merits) but boiled sugar, sticky sweet, colours of the rainbow, gets stuck in your teeth candy. And I still believe that it is mandatory to eat your skittles in even numbered colour combos. And I still do the thing, when you're shampooing your hair, and you make it stick up in peaks so you look like someone out of a Dick Tracy comic or Ace Ventura (yeah, like you don't!)
And I still like music with loud crunching guitars and I think world music can be kind of pretentious and that nice as classical music may be, I can never listen to it without imagining a bit of that classic Merrie Melodies cartoon action going on in my head. And I still get a snarky juvenile thrill when people swear in books or in song lyrics and so I may have graduated to reading Vonnegut, but I doubt I'll ever get myself to read books on self-improvement or the economy or by Milan Kundera just for pleasure. Why not Milan Kundera - cause Milan Kundera sucks ass!
And, oh yeah, I still use phrases like 'sucks ass.' And so I get to thinking, how grown up could I be?
Or is it that you never stop growing up...even when you've about finished growing old? Has adulthood become optional...who knows? The format has changed so much over the last few decades, it's hard to keep track of what we're supposed to be doing.
It might just be so much easier if life came with a manual or a script...so you'd know what you were supposed to do or say or what sense you were to make of the whole situation...like what am I doing writing this out at 2.30 a.m. when I have work tomorrow.
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