Then..... and now.....

Those were the days…

When if I needed to call someone, I could blindly dial that number. And if it was unreachable, I knew just about who the next 10 people I could call were…

When waking up at 8 was a pain, and picking what to wear for the day was another… But dressing up was fun and enjoyable, more so because I knew there would be people to tell me how great I looked or how I can borrow their accessories to look even better…

When the only time I got to know what was on the menu for the day was when I opened my lunch box…

When the minute a movie released, we knew we had to watch it… the only confusions were which theatre, which classes to bunk and whether the number of tickets to be booked were 10 or 12…

When friends’ parents would ask us to stay over for lunch or dinner, but we would escape just because we wanted to eat pani puri at the local market…

When the only foreign country we really knew was the US of A, because that was every budding engineer’s dream workplace…

When, if you had a problem, you could share it with all your friends and they would offer their shoulders for you to rest your head on and their dupattas to wipe your tears.

And then times changed…

Now the only reason I mail people is to wish them on their birthdays… And that too with a selfish motive- so that I would not have to take out the time out of my already long day to make a call and wish them personally…

Now I am more aware of whats happening in half a dozen other countries because I care enough to watch the news - God knows which country has been attacked today by a bunch of insane blood hungry scoundrels…

Now I need to plan what to cook for the next one week, in advance, because the weekend’s the only time I get to pay attention to grocery shopping or half cook the next week’s sabjis…

Now I don’t care what I wear daily, because every weekday I work sitting in the secluded area of my bedroom and every weekend I stay home relaxing from the tiring week I’ve had.

Now dreams of half a dozen onsite opportunities at work have been fulfilled, but I’ve grown to hate Australia because it took my best friend away, America because my loved ones stay there and are too far away to been seen regularly and the city I live in, because I have no social circle here…

Now when I think of eating out, I’m scared what diseases can be spread that way and I choose to eat at home, not because I want to, but because I’m scared how many days of leave I might have to apply in case I fall sick after eating out.

Now when I want to talk to someone, I have a million contacts in my phonebook, but no real friend…