Of Being Kids and Adults

A few weeks back the consultant called A called me up. Somehow, his brain cells had been short circuited and he wanted to revisit his childhood days. So he teamed up with another of his breed called V to plan out a trip to Essel World. And they decided to give a time of around 9:00 am to the women. Now V with his immense knowledge on Tam Bram Women (unlike other Vs in my life with negligible knowledge)and A with all his knowledge on women forgot one important thing. There is no way a woman is going to get ready at 9:00 am to go to Essel World whether she stays at Borivili or Marine Drive or somewhere in between. So we waited like Gandhiji’s monkeys in front of Borivili station waiting for the lovely ladies to turn up. M of course knew his ways with women. So he gallantly escorted the 6 lovely ladies to the three of us furiously chewing away at our gums.

Cutting the long tale of our trials short, a large gang of well educated over 25 somethings with a combined intelligence slightly lesser than Einstein landed up in Essel World on a fine Saturday morning. Now normally with consultants and bankers around I seldom speak. I sell soaps while they buy and sell companies. While I make sales reports, they make pitch reports to CEOs. So while everyone was consulting about maximizing their return on the investment I really really wanted to go up on the rides. So as I waited itching to go up on the roller coaster, everyone came up with a Plan of Action that was accepted without any form of unison (as expected of MBA grads) and like most well thought out of plan, it had one minor flaw. We went to the water rides first, ensuring that the next few rides were in a completely drenched state. But then what mattered was whether we were behaving like kids and that we were; without a doubt. I’m sure many of my friends that day had their first candy floss after ages. It was good to go back to childhood.

At the end of the day, we were tired beyond measure, the stalls in Essel World were slowly shutting down and we still were trying to figure out which ride we had missed. Sometimes, when you know something you treasure is slipping away, you grasp at it with all your might, only to realize how feeble your efforts are in reality. On that day I guess we were trying to grasp really hard at our childhoods -a time, when we did not pay heed to the possible safety hazards in a ride. We thought leaving our hands and shouting as the skies came down to meet us was the smartest thing to do. A time when we believed we could fly.

On the 13^th, a very dear friend had her birthday. She is like this glue that keeps a lot of us together. She ensures that we meet up. She wants us to meet up regularly and when she is really excited, she plans the get-togethers.

So I had been ordered to leave office early, which I did around 9, the earliest in that week and picked up another friend on the way. As we chatted, I realized that this is perhaps the first time in almost 4 months that I am going out with a crowd where I do not know everyone. Somewhere, life was losing itself. So as I gyrated the night away, (laugh all you want) I suddenly realized that within the last couple of weeks I had lived the extremes of life. From being a kid, to being an adult, all within the course of a few days.

I walked out of Hawaiian Shack to see the world outside, still pouring into the small disco at 12 in the night. Everyone was dressed to kill, or maybe most of them were just trying to hide the dark circles beneath their eyes. When you were a kid, you waited for Sunday. You waited for Doordarshan to show you Ramayana and Mahabharata. Today as an adult you wait for the Friday evening and if you are like me, you probably dread the Sunday evening.

So there I was experiencing the two extreme ages of my life and as I looked back, everything in my life seemed to have happened in fast forward with the time slipping away from my hands, whether I tried to grasp it or not.

Slipping away, just like my generation’s wasted efforts in controlling their receding hairlines and expanding waistlines.