Greetings!
1.You lose every friend you had at 20, because you are married and pregnant, and none of them have even found decent boyfriends yet.
2. Your brain stagnates. You find things like another prima gravida relating the agonies of constipation riveting. “I sat for hours and hours and then after all that I had a little, such a little, (measuring a nail width) bowel movement." (language edited). Yes, I ACTUALLY listened to that and didn’t have nightmares about it until years later.
3. You are 21 but people take you to be at least ten years older than you really are. And you look it too.
4. All your friends are busy partying, traveling abroad, buying the most delicious clothes, making and dumping boyfriends, while YOU are busy with diapers, immunization schedules, trying not to get pregnant again, wearing your oldest and only clothes, since you haven’t shopped for yourself in ages,because baby isn’t toilet trained and won’t wear diapers, and now that the hormones that raged at 20 have settled down, wondering what you saw in the man you married.
5. Finally the babies you had when you were 21 grow up and you are now free and raring to go, but all your friends are either just getting married or with new babies and no one has time for you.
6. You are taken to be older than your sister who is five years older than you because she has a 2-year-old, while your eldest is 20. (And nobody believes you when you say you’re not.)
7. You want to take up that exciting job you have been longing to do for years, but couldn’t because of the kids, but every employer is looking for 21-year-olds.
8. Your older daughter follows in your footsteps, marries at 20, and you become mother-in-law to a man who is just ten years younger than you, but calls you “Mum”.
9. You live in constant dread of being a grandmother, for god’s sweet sake, at 42!
10.And finally- because you never get to live! Because no matter how cute they look in pictures and what their mothers tell you, babies are the most selfish creatures on earth. They take your life and make it their own. And they never give it back. Not even when they are 21.
You have fun now and listen to-
Fried rice, aloo subzi, sheera, sabudana wada, and barfee.
