I detest family gatherings. Inevitably, they're full of people who only speak to each other as a formality passed on to them by some ancestor who decided to tie the knot with some other person and the end result was that, in the not too distant future, you and someone else who you find about as interesting as a ball of dog hair, have to smile and talk about stupid things to fill in the silences. Being with relatives is all about filling in those space with as much (and as volumous) nothing-talk as you possibly can until the blessed release of the inevitable "bus jee, main chalti houn" moment's re-arrival.

Family reunions also remind me of wasted potential. Of childhood playmates seperated from me by virtue of gender. For all my childhood, I completely ignored my female cousins who spoke of barbies and make-up and pretty pink pencil cases and roughhoused with the male cousins. Years of Mortal Kombat, Gameboy, cricket and fart jokes later, we had truly bonded in that special way that only the young can. Fast forward to ten years later and the same cousins you laughed at and with about anything and everything are the same ones who will scurry off to an exclusive boys-only corner from where, from time to time, floats the unmistakable noise of hand slapping and manly laughter, both of which will stop as soon as you invade their space, replaced by eyes darting about awkwardly while the slight residue of the laughter caused by a not so gentlemanly joke lingers.

On a more pleasant note, tonight was the 50th wedding anniversary of my grandfather's brother. Middle aged couples applauded, younger couples braced themselves and the unmarried raised eyebrows in wonder and puzzlement. Fifty years with one person. We may all put on our bravado-masks and say that we can't imagine not being bored with the same person if you had to live with them for fifty years and joke about how five years are too many but the truth is that the fact that two people who still stand together and smile shyly at each other after all those years when they think nobody's watching deserve our applause and admiration. While exciting and seeming less and less likely statistically (I'll probably be dead/eighty, whichever comes first, before my fiftieth anniversary rolls around) the thought of getting that used to someone's being by your side for half a century sounds both appealing and scary at the same time.