Of Growing Up and Ageing

I stood in the loud darkness outside my office, willing A to reach a little faster, all the while feeling the dull choke of cigarette smoke from all the meandering chimneys standing nearby. As luck would have it, all traffic jams of the world seem to occur outside my office compound, which always results in a spiralling boring wait on the road.

And just like that, yesterday, a guy asked me for directions.

Which I gave.

And then he introduced himself.

And then he made more small talk.

Small talk that seemed to be heading towards not-so-small directions.

It gets difficult to keep giving monosyllabic answers beyond a point.

So instead I picked up my phone and called A instead, and proceeded to talk to him for the next 5 minutes till he arrived.

Not that there was anything even mildly threatening about the guy.

Or weird.

Or shady.

Maybe he was just bored.

But I think more than anything else, he took me by surprise.

I can’t remember the last time a guy randomly tried to talk to me.

I think somewhere along the years flying by, time went from crazy evenings at pubs, meeting new people, flirting and enjoying yourself, to a tame life revolving around excel sheets, Uber rides home, and worrying about the maid’s tantrums.

Time went from being one of the few girls in an all guy’s team, to being yet another married girl hiding behind her cubicle.

Time went from a lot of attention, to startling randomly scattered experiences.

Time went from perfect skin to spots and the first signs of wrinkles.

But as narcissistic as this whole post has sounded, I don’t miss it one tiny bit.

Because after the excel sheet, and the Uber ride, I finally reach home, cranky as hell…but knowing there’s a cushiony diwan, a puffed up comforter, a laptop set up to watch the latest season of Black Mirror, and A to snuggle up to.

And life is, as it should be, when it should be.