yup! those dreaded few words! they havent been uttered by my parents as yet, but the rest of my relations have already started pratting that line with unnerving consistency and sincerity. its as if i was the last man standing on earth and the future of the human race depended on my capability to procreate, the moot point being that i am wasting precious sperm everyday and it wouldnt be long before my suppy ran out and then the human race would be doomed forever. when confronted with situations like these i feel quite helpless, as i am the sort of person who refuses to grow up. as you may have well derived from the name of my blog that a trait of juvenile bonhomie threads all my thoughts. its this childishness that i strive to protect and nurture and it is this childishness that is under threat from certain quarters. after all, my last girlfriend dumped me quite ceremoniously just a month prior to our marriage just because i refused to grow up, or something to that effect.
even as i look at all the girls who were with me in school i am hit with a metaphorical hard and blunt hammer. almost all of them are married and settled. a few of them even have kids. i mean, come on, i am only 25 for god's sake and is this the time to be changing the nappies of two bawling kids? i mean, isn't youth the best phase of one's life and isn't it supposed to be enjoyed while it lasts? i certainly feel it is, more so after i was rescued fom te brink of marriage by Fate. that incident opened my eyes to the dangers of what i had recklessly tried to commit and i realised that life is too precious to waste away tied down by the fetters of marriage. that is all for when my bones grow weak and my flesh goes soft. its for the time when my hair turns white and my teeth fall off, not now, not when i am enjoying myself so much.
this also brings me to write some words about annie, that huge and jolly woman i love so much and who has been the constant source of mirth and happiness to all who have known her. she is a sort of a human sledgehammer. she knows no reason and simply does things because they are there to be done. she is the human equivalent of the fountain of infinite joy. she was my class mate and one of the most amazing women i have ever known. she had no inhibitions like the rest of the girls did, spoke to us guys in our own language and could kick harder than any of us could. she had the constitution of a pit bull and the joie de vivre of a thrush. i have always bonded best with women who do not keep hidden agendas at the back of their minds, that is to say they are more akin to men than women. if she liked something she was always the first to say it, and vice versa. she was huge and a walking tub of fat. that made her the butt of constant jibes and comments from the rest of the guys. she was not in the least put off by it, choosing instead to crack more jokes at her own expense than we could, thereby taking the sting out of the whole joke.
she had lost her father quite early in her life due to the continuos political battles that have ravaged bengal since 1970s. being raised by a mother who had to devote more time to nursing sick men than her own child added two dimensions to her character. she became independant and at the same time didnt grow the ususal inhibitions that a woman in our society is supposed to grow. she was fairly brainy and did pretty decently in her exams. she was a good painter though and occassionally used to bring snatches of her work to class. after finishing school when all of us were trying to get admission in some engineering college or the other, she did the same. she gave up an opportunity to study english at st xavier's college and chose to study electrical engineering at some obscure corner of bengal. like i have already mentioned, she didn't follow the usual stereotype of a woman. it was there she met her future husband. true to her sledgehammer nature she lost no time in getting married to the very tall and handsome young man. the next three years were marked by the birth of two cute kids, the first a boy and the second a girl, interspersed by a miscarriage. when i went home this december, she had just given birth to her second child, a daughter. i was not just moved, but dumbstruck at how happy she was in life, defying all my expectations.
even at a time when i am still thinking of enjoying my life going to discos, pubs and roaming around, she has settled down to family life. even when i am pondering as to where to invest my money, she has already invested in two most beautiful kids. in her, i salute all the spirited women whom i have encountered in my life.
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