I started the second quarter of my life about 2 years back (will be 3 years back soon, but what the hell), and it’s been interesting. The one thing I had wanted since I was 15, was to remain single until I was 25. At 25, I wanted to just remain single.

It’s something about growing up. I was talking to J, a good friend for over a decade now, he is one dude who has always understood me.

We were talking about how we met, and both of us were 16 at that time – just out of school, rebels and ‘wanting to do things differently’. More than a decade later, we haven’t changed much, but we have suppressed a little of that rebellious attitude, and tried to cope with the life’s ’struggles’ – picking up threads where we left them, nurturing lost relationships,  growing up, in a sense of the word.

J was always someone who always slipped into ‘Invisible’ mode, or was it me who lost track of where he was? I can’t seem to remember..

But then he said he saw me differently now – as a ‘confident’ girl, with ‘attitude’ and ‘like a woman’. He saw me as confident (now) was strange. I thought I was always the confident girl. I understood later that ‘confidence’ to him was about my vocabulary. I am using ‘big’ words now (must be all the Scrabble I’ve been playing on Facebook!)

It was the ‘attitude’ bit that got to me a tad. I’ve heard that one before, and one too many times to shrug it off. I’ve never fancied the word, and don’t like people throwing attitude, and have always concerned myself about it. Then again, the 3 who have said it to me have been a major part of me.

As we got talking though and walked out of Koshys, he then figured, “Nonsense! This girl is the same Monkey I knew when she was 16.. Once a monkey, always a monkey!”.That clarified things in a way.

Now, as I look at how my life is going to be shaped in the next quarter, I do see a lot of change – more so in the way people see me than in the way that I am. So much might change around me, but like J said,”I’ll always be that 16 year old Monkey inside me…fooling around, getting excited about the smallest things, and still hoping that people will take me seriously enough inspite of my external demeanor.”

To 50! Cheers!