Nineteen Seven

Two years ago, someone told me - "Mate, I tell you - you are 25 today, and life from now is all downhill." (25 seemed too less for such a statement to me, but he got the concession since he was an American, and did not have a cocooned upbringing like us.) And like all descents down the hill, I am indeed coming down faster than the trudge upwards - the last 2 years, indeed, went quicker than any other. And with at least one tangle in every possible corner in life, these words kept coming back with each stroke of the knife through the second cake I cut at the stroke of midnight. I was back after a foot-deep dinner with my friends, to be treated to this visual delight at home. (See picture below) The yummy chocolate cake against the backdrop of the candles was too good to resist.



Even 1 year back, the cake would have surely been over in minutes. But this year, it is lying almost unaltered in the fridge. Sure sign of age. And even when the snaps were taken, half of the mind was busy coordinating the alternate actions of breathing and holding the tummy inside lest the bulge showed up in the snaps. These two indications, surely justify the two steps downhill I have taken since that holy man decided to share his realisation and discoveries in life with me on a day he should have cheered me up. Whatever happened to people wishing 'Tu jeeye hazaron saal...'

Here's wishing for all the good things that I have been wishing for since so long! May today's feeling of senility and the words of Mr. Jim be buried under the bundles of joy and the brightness of smiles all through the year.