adulthood.

Some of us grow old and get married. Some of us grow old and remain single. Previously, we drank coke. Then we started to drink shots, and more shots and more cocktails. Some of us grew to prefer beers, others still preferred their cocktails. But we all liked wine, and as we grew, we drank more and more of it. There had always been something very calm and poised about wine. And everyone hoped that like wine, we would age slowly, gracefully and expensively.

Some of us became wives and husbands and later, mothers and fathers. While for others, their own parents grew a little desperate and naggy, and so they signed up for dating events, enrolled in dating sites. Before, when you were much younger, if you were Indian, you not only had to marry an Indian, you had to marry within your caste. If you were catholic, you could not marry any christian, you had to marry a christian-catholic. But now that youth is no longer a friend, "any suitable partner" would suffice. So sad, the perfect fairy tale relationship we had once envisaged over sleepovers giggling under the covers, full of conditions and rules, will-nots and wants ebbing away; our very own bottle of champagne-concoction carefully preserved for "adulthood", still unpopped, at the bottom of the sea in a shipwreck.