I always look forward to going home but this time around things were different. In a span of around 2 months I have changed a lot. New hairstyle, lost a bit of weight etc and given the fact that my parents aren’t huge fans of experimentation, I knew I was in for some confrontations. Luckily, my bus got delayed and my dad could not pick me up, so I knew I was safe till he returned home in the evening. I got into an auto and reached home praying my mum would look beyond me!
I rang the doorbell and my mum’s first reaction was ”whats this bowl on ur head”. That set the tone for the day. After the initial shock, my mum kinda liked it and was ok with it. The thing about parents and especially mums is that even if you lose like 1mg of weight, they feel like you have become size zero. The food festival began shortly with my mum cooking everything she could and simultaneously giving me lectures every half hour to get my lazy butt in the kitchen and learn some household work. The latter obviously did not happen and I restored back some glory to the couch in front of the tv set that had been neglected since the last time I had been home. I do not really know what I did between 10 am and 6pm but there was definitely lot of eating and sleeping and lecturing 
. My sis came in the evening and finally I had someone to share all the scoldings with 
.
We yapped away till midnight till dad had to forcibly ask us to sleep because the next day was Ugadi. Nevertheless, we woke up early much to my parents’ delight and had a great time the whole day. Met a lot of friends, had lot of good food and saw a few really good and not-so-good movies on the telly. Saturday was full of surprises. After a long gap my dad sat me down and asked me about my future goals. I have actually phrased and rephrased this answer many times in my head but when it came to telling my dad I just mumbled something and ended up sounding like a total moron. Pa and mum got a little carried away and started talking about how I needed to become more responsible and that I had probably 3-4 years left before the D-day etc. They have been attending way too may marriages of late and I know that has had some influence. I excused myself as politely as I could and went out with my sister for a walk and realized that just till the last semester I was such a different person and things have changed real fast. Suddenly everyone looks at me like a grown up who will work and earn etc etc. I refuse to become responsible and mature because being irresponsible is so much more fun and easy! Somewhere though I know that change is inevitable and as a first step I entered the kitchen and volunteered to help my mum. She was super happy but my sister was not because now she has become the new me and its one tough spot to be in !!
As I got into the bus last night, I promised that I would stop acting like a brat and act more responsibly when it comes to my family and relations in general. As I entered the campus in the morning, I could not remember any of those promises !!!
