Sad Times

This has been a rather sad trip home for me. I just got two days of my puja vacation to spend at home and I discovered a lot of things had changed.
My grandparents showed signs of growing old, something I really didn't like to see. My grandmother seemed to have shrunk into herself. She seems to be getting smaller and smaller by the day. I still got a chance to enjoy her great filter coffee though. And my grandfather, the centre of my life for 4 years, the person holding the entire family together, always full of life and love and good advice seems to have become old and tired. It almost brought tears to my eyes to see him like that.
I spent four years of my life in my grandfather’s house. Four years while in engineering college. In retrospect they seem to be the best years of my life so far. An unforgettable time. I learnt more in that time than anywhere else. I was lucky, much more than I realized then.
We had a get together too during those short two days, my class from engineering college. A lot of conversations and memories relived. For the guys it was one more chance to be at college, away from mundane lives as software professionals. I spoke more to my class mates then than I ever did during 4 years of engineering college.
And then the saddest part. Two of my closest friends are getting married. And things have changed so much. They talk about wedding plans and in-laws and new houses. And I suddenly realized that this would be the last time I saw them before they were married. Marriage somehow seems to turn young carefree girls into mature care laden responsible adults. And I didn’t want that to happen to them. I wanted them to be the same people I had known in college. But I realized that it would be impossible. And that soon I would have to turn into one too. And that was the saddest part.