Being 26

I am 26 and a half. It is a really difficult age to be. I mean your wild years are behind you. Now all you can look forward to is maturity. All your friends are getting married or engaged. Your facebook timeline looks like a Wedding album and Engagement proclamation combined.

Everywhere you look, you will find people just waiting to get married. All your exes are getting married and driving into the sunset with their knight in shining armour.  You are working real hard because you want to be worthwhile. There’s no time to be wasted. You lose touch with your close friends with whom you thought you would always be in touch. You come to know about their marriages via status updates and photo updates. You can’t drink as much alcohol as you used to. Now it takes a whole day just to recover from the hangover. You start getting a tummy. All the girls you see are too young for you. All the girls your age are in a steady relationship. God forbid if you are single at the age of 26, you will find a single girl when hell freezes over.

These symptoms were not even the worse ones. The worst side effect of being a 26 year old guy in India is your family relatives asking you the dreaded question: “When are you getting married?” Why the hell is everyone all of a sudden interested in me getting married! Do I think I am ready? Let me tell you the answer to that one “NO!!” Every family function or get together you attend this topic raises its ugly head! I feel as if I should stick a note on my head saying “Not ready”. Everyone is curious if you are seeing someone. Even if you are not, there are a lot of nosey people who would try to dig out information about it. You really can’t run away from all this. How long can you say no to attending family functions?!

Ahh well.. what can one do? I guess as we go towards the later half of the 20s, this all is expected. But, why god why? I thought we had a deal. I wouldn’t age more than 25!! Whatever happened to that one??