Que Sera Sera

Ten years ago, if you had asked me what I’d be doing ten years hence, you can bet your last rupee the answer wouldn’t have been ‘Married. With Kid. Currently Unemployed.’ And yet, here I am, busily washing drool off my keyboard as I type, while former classmates who at that point had the ambition of a snail are busy attending conferences in Thailand and Singapore and planning vacations in Bali.

People who knew me then would fall off the chair if they found out I had an arranged marriage, let alone mothered a child. Somehow they’d be more willing to believe that I’d run off on a trip to Rishikesh where I’d met a bearded weirdo and we were currently shacked up in the foothills of the Himalayas waiting out the winter so we could continue our trek to Nepal. Well unless hubby decides to quit cushy job and turn into a Yeti, I don’t see that happening anytime in the near future, which is going to cause quite of few of those ex-classmates to shake their heads and wonder what the world was coming to.

I recently ran into one such then-unambitious, now-jetsetting friend last week. ‘Sense! Is that you? Why you look positively… feminine!’ he said. ‘So do you.’ Said I, thinking it was only fair that I should return the compliment.
‘ So… where have you been? What naughty things have you been upto?’ he asks, lighting up a smoke. I stare at him open-mouthed- this was the same chap who used ro get a coughing fit every time our canteen wallah maroed a tadka!
‘I’ve just got back from a 4 day conference in Singapore.’ He continued, 'life’s a bitch, man. Shitloads of work. Had to even cancel my plans of watching the football finals!’ ‘on the telly?’ I ask innocently. ‘No way dude. In Germany! You couldn’t make it either huh?’ ‘Nope. Was otherwise occupied.’ I said. ‘Oh? Work? Play?’ he asks elbowing me in the ribs and wiggling his brows.
‘Well, you could say that, although dangling a ball in front of Pickwick can’t technically be called play.’
‘Pickwick? New pet?’
‘Nope. New Son.’ Just then Hubby saunters in with cherubic face and a grinning Pickwick. ‘This is hubby- and That’s Pickwick.’ I say to the gawking classmate. ‘I’d love to stay and chat, but I gotta rush home and make dinner…’I throw out as I make my exit. That should remind him- I was always unpredictable.