Aging – Part 2!

[I suggest you read the first part of this post, to understand what I am talking about here. Otherwise you will have no context and think I am out of my mind to be thinking about aging when I am barely 28(yeah, I don’t feel old with that age!)]

Life has changed, our perspective towards it has changed, and the thoughts towards life have changed, I must say, drastically, much to even my surprise!

Marriage – When we met each other, we liked each other which gradually converted to love. But yes, we agreed to get married because we knew we would fall in love, it being an arranged marriage where our parents were considerate enough to give us our space to like the other person. But once we decided to get married, both of us saw no point in delaying it. It only seemed like the right thing to do!
Well, only after getting married did we both realize that we weren’t really ready for the responsibility marriage got us both into, but thankfully we both felt the same way about marriage and responsibility! I remember we used to have long discussions on how to avert the acts marriage was throwing at us, and how to still live a carefree life. There wasn’t a single weekend in the first year of our marriage where we both wouldn’t have thought on how life has changed, and how we did not want it to be changed, and how we would’ve been totally happy with each other had we just opted for a Live-In instead of a total marriage. After all, that would still mean that we are totally in love with each other and that we can still be with each other, and not having to do the certain things that married couples are supposed to do, per the society. And S would go on and on about how he still feels marriage wasn’t the right thing for him! And we were terribly worried about losing our individual space and freedom and that thinking that way also sounded like a mean thought!

It took us around 3 years to get okay with the whole thought of being married. We have come a long way from the the couple that sighed at completing one year together(the sigh was that of relief that we both were still alive after that one year, much to the amusement of our friends!) to the couple that was happy at having finished 3 years together and looked forward to more.
We both didn’t think we would make it this far, at least with the challenges we created for ourselves!
Along the line, I learnt how to handle the attention S got from women what with his status as an ex-model and all, and he learnt how to handle the attention I receive (however less it is! :-) ) without it affecting our relationship and understanding that we share. And we now laugh as we tell our parents when they remark on our looks, that we wouldn’t have been married this long had we married each other for our looks. We would’ve been divorced within the first year of marriage in that case! 
Thankfully, in spite of all the immaturity we had 4 years back, we knew we were marrying each other for the right reasons and not looks at all! And that we weren’t compromising in any aspect to get married!

Kids - which was once a natural progression for us as a couple when we weren’t even one, is now something we don’t even want to consider. It looks like way too much responsibility to handle when we are ourselves not ready to take up the ones that we have already! Planning the whole life around someone who has not yet arrived still looks like a difficult thing to do, and we eventually realized we would probably never get ready for one. So instead of dreaming about pampering my own kids, I now pamper the ones my friends have and silently smile when they rant at how their life has changed in a good or a bad way because of the new arrival!
Our plans to buy a nice apartment have changed to a nice big independent house, with a lawn so that parents(the responsibility we once wanted to shy away from) and our dogs can all stay happily with each other, while we continue to bicker around.

Jobs – After having landed in the company which is almost every software engineer’s dream company, we don’t seem to be particularly elated about the thought of working forever, even if it is in this place. Yes, this obviously is one of the best places to work for, but we have had a few battles here too, though we both have together come a long way -
From the first week where S stormed into his boss’s office and announced he is quitting because he doesn’t like the place to the guy who now has actually an idea on where he wants to be in the next 2 years, and from someone who wanted to spit fire at everyone in her leadership chain for making her the scapegoat to someone who has now almost won them all back, and is now planning for her next two years, we have grown a lot as individuals in this place.
In our earlier companies, we were rock-stars. Yes, this place hires only rock-stars, but only after we came in that life taught us humility. We learnt that there are bigger rock-stars even in our chosen hobbies. People around here take photography or painting or pottery or for that matter, nuclear physics as a serious art form, and have passionate discussions, and I remember feeling diminished among such big-wigs of the industry. It took sometime and understanding to get to the thought that we are no lesser than them, but there is a lot more to learn too.

So now, instead of planning when to quit so that we can spend all the time doing something we like, life has a structure around it. We know what all we want to accomplish before we quit and where we should be when we do that!


Life in a relationship, which looked like a cake walk started falling into perspective. It indeed is a cakewalk, but the cake might get stashed a bit if you are not careful and there can be some cardboard stuff stuck to it which can be uncomfortable before you bite the cake, but if you know what the taste of the cake is like, you will be ready for all that and be careful to still like the cake without caring for its shape! :)

Now we really know what works for a couple to be a relationship! Not the mushy sweet stuff that you say to each other in front of people or the I-Love-Yous you give each other whenever there is a fight, but an honest attempt to make it work, and a matured conversation after every fight, just so that you don’t carry the frustration into the next day and the next fight. We now know that the reason why we stuck together was not only because we love each other, but because of our willingness to discuss issues related to life, career, family, responsibilities and each other in a honest way and work on the feedback too, with the eagerness to spend every minute with each other added to it! It is also understanding how to respect the other person’s space, yet feel close to them, respect what he/she likes or values yet not let go of what we believe in and the willingness to give a lot and receive too!  

Couple of weeks back, S walks up to me and grumbles about the gray hair he has been discovering. What he had wished for couple of years back, is now turning into a bane. Back then he wanted some salt and pepper because he thought chicks dig old men! :-) And the man who said that he would age gracefully almost cried at his 30th birthday! I, on the other hand have been no better myself. I have been denying that I am growing old, and refusing the acknowledge the gray hair after the initial bouts of screaming.

I guess that’s the case with our families too. Our parents are not yet convinced that we are not actually as young as we are.  Mom hasn’t accepted that I am actually 28 and now its perfectly acceptable for my maid’s daughter who is 14 yrs old to call me Aunty, and MIL defends me and my age in front of her friends if they make a comment about my age and that I should have kids soon! This surely is delightful, but it sometimes hurts to see that they are still in denial! :-)

Sometimes I feel like growing old immediately so that I can enjoy my old age with S calmly, but I also see reason in what S says – that he wants to enjoy every minute of his youth and grow old with me, not directly jump to the old age! I think I agree with him on this one!

Now the focus is not about the fact that we are getting old. Its about doing all the things we wanted to do, enjoy the youth fully and invite old age gracefully. The only doubtful word here is ‘grace’, and I promise myself that I will practice it! :-)

Aging – Part 1!

For no specific reason, the past few days have been filled with nostalgia, of growing up, of living together, of birthdays and of life in general. They have also been filled with stress caused by silly things, and career related discussions like no other months! And then, IdeaSmithy wrote this. It brought back memories of how I was when I was younger and how I am now. It also reminded me that I want to write a similar diaries – The Thirty Diaries!

One of those lovely evenings around 4 years back, when we were younger ourselves, me and S were looking at a group of teenage girls giggling and talking among themselves in Odyssey, and we smiled to ourselves. That was the first time we ever went to Odyssey, and the initial magic of having met someone special was also there. The conversation then drifted to aging. And S said as a matter of fact, that he would age gracefully. To which I responded with a similar answer and said that all my future son’s friends would have a crush on me, and our future daughter’s friends would have a crush on him. We then discussed on how cool parents we would be, and how we would pamper our kids. He went on to talk on how he would protect the girl from guys like himself and I spoke on how I would discipline the dogs.

This was one of those sweet conversations after which we both fell in love with each other a bit more, and smiled widely at each other’s thoughts when we slept. Like I said, we were much younger, and very innocent, and were still figuring out what we wanted in life. He had just turned 27 and I was only 24. We thought we were ready for marriage, and we thought it would be a cake walk. After all, we both knew what relationships were all about. And we clearly knew what it would take to make them work. And we liked each other, though we weren’t totally in love with each other yet. We thought we would be happy in our current jobs, and the thought that there could be something beyond this job also didn’t strike to me, though he did harbor a dream or two about quitting it for a life-long of pottery or painting by the beach!

I thought I would be perfect daughter and daughter-in-law, and would be great at handling the responsibility. For me, life with the mother-in-law looked like a sweet saas-bahu serial where we would not have a single disagreement, and not a single fight. And the thought of a disconcert with Mom or Dad was never in the question. I planned how life would be when B started working, and how we would all go on holidays together, and how one day, I would find a nice girl for him and get him married.

I had planned on how B would pamper my kids, and how his wife and I would go shopping. I also harbored dreams of pampering S’s niece and nephew – basically all dreams of pampering kids.
We also thought that we were ready to settle down. Have a nice small apartment in the city and how we would fill it with little pieces of furniture – one easel for him, one bayside window for myself to read my books, a house full of electronic items guaranteed to give humans some comfort and all the likes.

Truly, the last 4 years have taught me a lot… They taught me about life, love, relationships and yes, aging too!

To be Continued...

Extrapolation!

Seriously.. isn’t this extrapolation at its best? And the point on getting a bulk deal on wedding cake! Soooo geeky!
I love geeks, geekism and being a geek! ( I totally have a story to share where I conned a friend into believing that I have read access to GChat DBs! This is one of my best geek jokes off late, and I can rate the Light Year joke a close second! ;-) )

Though I don’t wish for four dozen husbands at the end of the month, (Who has the patience to teach the new husband all good manners and tame him over and over again! I am getting somewhere in all these 4 years and S is going to be the best husband because of his learning and grasping ability), but wouldn’t men love to have a similar extrapolation !
C’mon, I am yet to meet an unmarried man who doesn’t want to have four dozen new women in his life in the span of a month!
Married ones know that it comes with a price and so generally don’t have such dangerous wishes in life! They spend their free time ogling at women in public places or staring in the Cosmos or Playboys!

Oh btw, I think i love this line too – Always let the woman have the last word! Anything you say after that would be the start of a new argument! Soooo totally true! *Gee*

Discovery of Hydie!

Oh.. the last weekend had been discoveries all over! Of some nice eating places, some awesome things to eat and drink, renewing relationships and the fact that I can drive all over Hydie.. :)

Yes.. this weekend has been the most important weekend of all – I was all alone by myself in this big beautiful city, the weather was awesome and I had to drive - something which I always thought I would never be able to do! :)

For starters, it was MIL’s birthday, and apart from the regular gifts I got for her, she also had this most-awesome-cake ever to cut! All three of freaked out on the cake, missing S not to share the cake, but the excitement! And then we went for a pizza in the evening, and I drove! After the whole thing, I saw my in-laws talk about the whole episode of their DIL getting cake for her bday to all and sundry, either by sharing the photos or by calling them and telling them! S was totally excited by seeing his Mom smile like a baby at the cake and his Dad eye it eagerly, all in the same photo! :)

And then over the weekend, after a shopping marathon with a friend, we discovered this really cool Deli – City Deli, which is open till 1130 PM, and has some of the best sandwiches and juices! I am going to be there more often, because of the great food and the fact that its bang opposite to my Yoga studio!

This morning, I think I tasted the best tea ever! Oh yes.. the latest obsession in Ms.Taggart’s brain-villa is teas. All kinds of green and medicinal teas it is! Without both milk and sugar! After trying Tetley’s Green Tea with Jasmine, some other brand’s green tea with Morrocon Mint, Organic’s Tulsi with Green tea, now its the turn of GTee’s Hibiscus Tea! I think one of the best teas I will ever have all my life!

Did you notice the awesome color of the tea? Blood red! :)
More about it on Wiki!

Dasvidaniya!

S had warned me not to watch this movie when I was all by myself, but that only hyped up the movie for me. I was totally excited by the Bucket List concept, and had to see this – to know the hype behind the movie, and to get ideas to make my own Bucket List.

Man.. what a beautiful movie it was! Vinay makes a totally adorable dying-Amar-Kaul and at times wrenched my heart and welled my eyes with tears with his adorable acting!

More than Vinay, its the list he made and how he went about to make them possible was what was heart-touching! An old love, a best friend, a materialistic dream, a heart-tugging item for Mother, an attempt to get back to the estranged brother, falling in love and living life recklessly during it.. the list says it all. Something everyone should do before dying.

And I guess its the best friend and the brother thingy that got me! :(

Guess, I should make my bucket list too.. and should not wait to make it to add the point about the estranged brother! Sigh.. if only life was simpler!