The Peter Pan Syndrome

This past weekend I had the opportunity to do a flash back and catch up with faces and memories from 15 to 20 years ago. It was a reunion of my alma mater in Chennai and I had motivated myself to go there. It was a blast and I had a terrific time. As one of the folks commented, I made sure I had a good time to ensure a good Return on Investment. Even as I was talking to all the people I knew and laughing with people I did not, I was making a disturbing observation.

I was part of the crowd that had refused to grow up. There were those in the crowd, my batch mates, seniors, juniors who had actually grown up. They had come with their families, their grown up or growing up children, all very nice prim and proper. They were acting their middle ages. And here I was and thank god, a few more of my types who were refusing to grow up. We acted as it was our final year in college.

After all the ethanol was oxidized in the system, I went into huge introspection on whether it was right on me to refuse to grow up. It was very funny that I actually felt that some of the people I knew had aged. Even though they were younger to me, I felt somehow that I was young and they had just run away and become old! It was a very odd feeling. Was life slipping away and we were just not running with it? We had decided to stay back and refuse to move! We were having way too much fun when the others were getting older and may be wiser?

As a friend of mine and I were discussing over a session of some excellent wine the following night, we were in the middle overs of a fifty over match. Right now there is consolidation. Will we win? Will we meet the target? Then again what is the target? I guess we have to wait for the slog overs to find out. Hopefully the match is not rained out! And till that time we will have to rotate the strike and farm runs. Every run does count, doesn't it?