Middle age and young cousins...

I had a young nephew visiting and took off from work for 8 days - a record by my standards!

He had just entered into his 13th year and here I am on the periphery of my 40th - so we had to find common meeting grounds. On top of it, as if God wanted to create a study of opposites, the child was reticent, reserved and amazingly well-behaved. He also was a very frugal eater, never bothered anyone...

It turned out to be a situation of "reliving my childhood". We went to all places that I had enjoyed as a kid and all that were "activity" filled - not too much of a problem since I have never been very "girl-ish" and enjoyed all of these when I was young!

We did the rounds of Zoo, Dilli Darshan, Mall hopping, Adventure rides, Railway Museum, and the IPL at Mohali. And had a ball, enjoyed ourselves, laughed a lot, basically acted completely silly...

We also travelled by Rickshaw, Auto-rickshaw, Metro (the poor kid got smothered in the crowds and particulary shuddered at the thought of travelling by it again), Low level bus (loved the experience - sat on the higher end of the low level DTC bus), etc. So he had all kinds of adventures on all modes of travel.

I always wanted to do all the above all over again and was meaning to do it each year but never got around to getting out, so Suvigya's (my nephew) trip gave me the perfect excuse.

What I had not bargained for though was that I would "feel" my age! I was dog-tired every single day. The adventure rides gave my tummy a run for the money spent there, the travel left me drained, the food (McD, Donuts, Pastries, rolls, etc.) left me with a massive weight gain...

And after Suvigya left, I am still re-cuperating - I need another off to get over this off!!!

Meeting old friends...

February 2010 will go down as a month dedicated to old friends. My husband caught up with 5 of his friends who were with him in Grade VIII after 32 years in Chennai and I caught up with 3 old college friends (after an average of 10 years plus!)

What is with meeting old friends? My husband could not stop grinning for ages after his 5 hour marathon session with his friends and I am feeling generally very good with life after Saturday, when I met these guys!

The nostalgia is really something. Also the fact that there are no pretensions - I mean your now does not matter as they all know your then...

The friends - Sunder (who I was meeting after 16 years or so), Salil (after 11 years or so) and Giggle (after 2-3 years) - all got together as Sunder was visiting from Australia, where he has been for donkey's years. It was an impromptu meeting and I had all of an hour's notice. And It was great fun!!!

We remembered old things - bitched some more, focused on the "great" and "not-so-great" times and it was funny how much we were able to recapture individually.

Friends are good for our very being... And old friends are the icing on the cake.

I spoke with Johney from college a month ago and this was after ages (atleast 10 years or so!)... and the feeling was great!

The nicest thing about friends of "long standing" or "chaddi-dost" is that they have seen you grow up and therefore they know you as the person you are rather than the individual that you have become. And they are perfectly content to accept the incongruities between both..

Thank God for frineds and I firmly believe that "Friends are God's economic response to expensive psychiatrists".