Christmas in Suburbia

Christmas this year was slightly depressing. Don't know why really. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that everyone seems to be growing up and leaving. Normally there'd be at least fifteen of us cousins and this year there were only four. N flying down from Bombay was the only bright spot this Christmas. She's this storehouse of gossip, witty and amazingly fun if you're not the one she's ripping apart. Mum always called her The Mirch. The last time we saw her, she'd mellowed. We attributed it to her newly acquired boyfriend and sighed, thinking we'd seen the last of her mirchiness. But we were wrong. The Mirch's boyfriend moved to Gurgaon and I think the distance made the difference because she was back in full form.

Her sister in Chicago was recently mugged by a six foot by three foot (that's excluding the hairdo) African woman in a purple mumu. The Mirch had us in splits describing how her sister desperately clung on to her bag trying to ward off the woman by banging her on the head with a tiny box of chocolates. Her screams for assisstance were ignored by her hapless husband who later defended himself by saying that the attacker was a woman, and there was nothing he could do about it. I guess damsels in distress can only claim chivalry if they're being attacked by a dragon or something. Though I think a big purple woman comes pretty close.

The depressing part however, was not so much how everyone's growing up as how they seem to be subsiding into some sort of suburban middleagedness. Except for The Mirch, I think, everyone seems to be so smugly contented about where they've reached in life. Take my cousin Bose for instance. He's getting married in about a month and he's seems so old and boring. It's not just that he's losing hair and gaining girth. It's that he's so blahly happy with his beautiful home and his beautiful wife. Like he's got everything life has to offer and now he's going to sit back and enjoy it. AND HE HASN'T HIT THIRTY YET!

The scariest part is that I can see myself getting there in ten years time. Maybe even less. I can see myself getting a good job and (gasp) settling down! And being trapped in suburbia for the rest of my life. Right now, I so desperately want to just cut and run. Just chuck college, chuck everything and get out of there and backpack across the world doing unbelievably stupid stuff.

And this is the most depressing part. That as much as I want to, I know I never will.