Old Joy

One of the ways of idling away a wintery night is to sink under a quilt, look out into the dark and reminisce the past. The childhood.
Then what actually sets in is a sense of what the romantics called the Sublime: getting lost in the years of wonder, a surrender of the self.

Quite strangely the thoughts "wander" chronologically. It starts with the times of playing cricket on the road, breaking the neighbor’s window panes. Running out in the middle of the game to watch Mithun da's action flick on doordarshan. The sheer joy of watching Tales Pin and Duck Tales on sunday mornings. Getting up at 3AM to watch cricket matches. Running back home breathlessly after school to watch the dying moments of a cricket match.
Waiting for dad to come home on a Friday evening with the new edition of the sportstar. It was actually the center-fold poster that aroused the curiosity. Reading all those Tinkles and Tintins. The rides on dad's scooter. The excitement of going out to eat Masala Dosa. Buying 10 shunti peppermints with 50 paisa on the way to the school.
Renting a VCP for a day and try squeezing in as many movies as possible. Two Raj Kumar movies for the old. Two Van Damme movies for the young. Watching Jackie Chan movies for 10 rupees at a nearby theatre.
Matching the color of the eraser, pencil, scale and other paraphernalia with that of the cute girl who sat next to you in the classroom. Fixing the class quizzes so that you look like a real smart ass to the cute girl.
Making the 5 fold paper planes with the math notes at the end of the academic year. Stripping the notebooks off their hardbound and constructing houses with them. Eventually bringing down the house by "directing" an action sequence where the hot wheel scar swirls out of control and smashes into the house.
Waiting for mom and dad to go out for groceries so that we can loot the eatables and conduct our cricket "world cup" played with the rolled up paper ball and the pencil case which served as a bat. We made sure India won most of the world cups.
Hitting a tire around. Playing cop and thief with the tires. Flaunting the bicycle. Taking it for a walk. Cycling to school. Cycling back home in record time. Watering the plants. Letting a paper boat sail in the drains and running behind it.
Working on projects like designing a missile launcher with a wood plank and 3 nails. Launching the missiles into the neighbor's garden. Testing the range of those. Redesigning to achieve a longer range.
Sending postcards with questions to 'Tinkle Tells You Why'. Waiting for the trinn of the postman's bicycle hoping that he would bring news of us winning some prizes.
Hanging out with your best friend and discussing the adventures of superman. Wondering whether there is superman's dress available in the market which would make us super. Trying to do a Tarzan and breaking my left arm, while the best friend runs away from there.
And it doesn’t end at this.

15 years since the last memory of the innocent past. Things have gone topsy-turvy. There is no more beauty in minimalistic things. Wants have become very materialistic.
There is a kind of inherent queasiness to revisiting a dormant friendship. You try to rekindle the bond but eventually it becomes clear that time elapsed is not the only roadblock standing between estranged friends.

The old joy is all the blissful joy there ever was.

Quarter-life Crisis

The other day, one of my friends turned a year older into the later half of the 20s. I happily welcomed into the club and we discussed how life would get into muck from here on.
As a follow-up, a couple of days later he sent a forward which pretty much echoed the travails of being over the hill. (I feel over 25 is over the hill!)

You look at your job... and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure.

You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you're doing this because you know that you aren't a bad person. You want to settle down for good because now all of a sudden that becomes top priority. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You begin to think a companion for life is better than a hundred in the shack and for once you would not mind standing tall for that special someone which otherwise you had never thought of until now. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself... and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that every one reading this relates to it.We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.
We call it the "Quarter-life Crisis".

P.S. I hope there wouldn't be a sequel to this, the Mid-life Crisis !