My quarter life crisis…

I turned 29 today… my orkut scrap book whose count accelerated up a few numbers today stand proof to the significance of 2 things – one that happened 29 years back and I had no control over and the other that happened maybe 5 years ago and in a moment of euphoric madness at being among the first to receive a privileged invite to join this social networking site… ever since I have not deleted any scraps on this site and have been trying my best to at least achieve a respectable scrap count… needless to say I have hopelessly failed due to many reasons (definitely not my vibrant social life) and which is not the reason I started this post so I stop the discussion right here right now…

Yeah I am 29… that is what I would say whenever anyone asked me for my age… well it is simple no… I just have to add up the number of years to 1980 and it is very easy to add something to a number that ends in zero… or subtract a number that ends in zero… whichever way you follow to calculate your age. Anyways, though I am proud of my arithmetic abilities, I am not going to give you a 101 ways to calculate your age – what I am merely trying to point out here is that I am 29 – and it is so easy to calculate that I have not made a mistake… so the next time you put your hand to your mouth and say “what… you are 29???”, I can at least understand that you are not doubting the accuracy of the number.

But yeah there is one person, or rather personified person, who lives inside me screaming at the top of his voice that my age is only 25… 25 – can you believe it? There are only two other persons in who achieved this not growing up thingee – Markandeya at sweet sixteen and probably Peter Pan – the boy who refused to grow up… though I lost the chance to achieve the world record of being the youngest to achieve this feat, maybe I could have tried for the oldest 25year old alive… had I not gotten jolted out of this a few days back…

Now don’t ask me why 25 in particular and why not 20 or 15 or even 30… maybe it was at 25 that I went back to school again or maybe 25 was the time I lost touch with reality or maybe just plain lost it… the point is the magic number was 25… or it could have just been an arbitrary number cloud around the number 25 which makes it into a hazy and maybe even an irrational number – but we all know that we cannot age irrationally – aren’t we all rational?

So there I was happily oblivious to my ageing process living a life without any major burdens, enjoying the in-between period from restrained childhood to a responsible adulthood… partying on weekends and partying on weekdays… spending without a worry whatever little I was paid at the end of the month… when there was no water available, we drank beer instead, taking a leaf out of the wise lady Marie Antoinette’s life… all my friends were quite like me living a life of reckless irresponsibility.

The group got constantly modified – people kept moving out and others came in to replace them. But I didn’t notice… they were all still 25 year olds like me. Until suddenly one day I sat up and took notice, I realized that others around me had been ageing all this while… suddenly my friends and cousins became uncles and aunts… the cute girls fresh from college or working in BPOs seemed like the ones to ogle at and I used to wonder that how women these days were getting pretty silly… while the ones I was used to ogling suddenly became the aunties with the constantly crying misbehaving kids… while the guys with whom I used to drink beer and hung out until pretty late into the night, were suddenly very serious about getting home early…

The telling blows came when these aunties and uncles introduced me to their kids as an uncle and the kids shamelessly called me uncle – far from the anna or bhaiyya which I was used to. And I started looking at the mirror more often to check whether I had any grays poking out of my head… but then after a couple of such false alarms, my brain kicked in dismissing the claims by the adults introducing me to their kids as “uncle” as a mere indication of the jealousy that comes up when older people see younger people having more fun… but by now i was confused on what to call them... i guess definitely not "aunties" as the "uncles" would insist on an explanation...

The final blows came from my mom – her favorite phrases being – “erumai/kazhudhai vayasu achu” (an old tam saying that compares you to a buffalo or donkey’s age - duh) whenever I am having fun… an admonishment which I never understood because I was acting my age… 25… the best part was when she used to say that I was irresponsible and that my dad was married (which is usually associated with being responsible – refer the example above where guys want to go home early) when he was 27… now though marriage seemed like a necessary evil, I was still ok with my present single state because I still had 2 more years to attain that maturity… no?

But, all good things must come to an end and so does my 25^th year… after running successfully for the last 4 years, I decided that I can accept the fact that I am actually older… though my alter ego who sits inside my head still might poke out and claim that I am only 25, I am slowly feeding him the shocking news of his age so that it does not come as a great shock to him...

PS. My luck seems to be changing on my 29^th birthday though. Something good happened – mclaren is back on top.

PPS. Throughout the post I was reminded of koundamani’s famous “take the 25” comedy… here it is on youtube…