26

Warning: This note does not involve the oft-mentioned and evil in-your-face farting cat and is more like an extended whiney status update which would have otherwise gone like ‘Megha Rajeev – is listening to the voices in her head and feeling blessed *inappropriate smiley*’. 

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Before my 20th birthday, I went through a state of panic and whined to every second person I met about turning old. I even had a list of things to do before doomsday hit. All this was quite a while ago. I turned 26 a few days back and I do not have a list. Instead, there is Buzzfeed telling me about the 27 miracles I should perform before turning 27.

There was an article ‘26, Unmarried and Childless’ that went viral recently. Mine is a case of ‘26, Back to School After Quitting Job and Will Have to Start Repaying Student Loan Soon’. Unmarried-ness and childless-ness are not quite in a light-year vicinity of the radar. Also, nowadays I am totally at peace with Mammooty and Mohanlal acting as college students in movies.

The only downside of the situation is probably that you cannot be on the same page with your old friends. The one activity I had during my last term break was attending the birthday party of a friend’s baby and listening to others reminisce about those wild engineering days. I have temporarily stopped going home for breaks now. As much as I like to believe I am in love with Trivandrum, the realisation dawned that sometimes the city does not have enough power to keep drawing you back as much as the citizens do. And the citizens have moved on either temporally or spatially or mortally (yes, my cat died).

The other day, I was happily having a wholesome dinner of chips and cola because I was too lazy to undertake the fifty five second journey from my room to the mess. While trying to grab some chips from the vast arid expanse within the newly-opened chips bag, I watched a conversation between two of my friends in a Whatsapp group. They were exchanging bhindi recipes. Hmmm, bhindi recipes. Note to self – must start acquiring life-skills that go beyond making instant noodles in five different ways. But no, not making bhindi. More like making essentials like Kallumakkaya fry and Kanava thoran, and baking the occasional pro-allergy eggless nut-less brownie. I guess eggless and nut-less probably bypass most gender spaces brownies can occupy.

Another day in another Whatsapp group: I wanted to share some joy about the new app I installed in my browser. The app replaced all baby pictures in my FB newsfeed with pictures of cats and clouds. So, I share this exciting piece of information and suddenly notice that my friend has shared the picture of her daughter’s first haircut in the group just before that.

However, the true test of maturity comes when you go stationery shopping with your niece and she assumes that you are buying that nice set of crayons for her. I did not ace that test gracefully. We settled it with a shouting match in the hypermarket. My crayons! No mine! Grrrrrrrrr!!! Just when you think life is all peaceful after your elder sister marries and goes away, she sends the niece your way to lay claim over your fish fry and colouring tools.

Um yeah. That’s all the randomness for now. I feel Kallumakkaya-deficient.