things have changed!

I was just casually talking to a friend of mine from high school on this article on “Sexual Revolution” I will be writing for the Bhutan Now Magazine (which must be forgotten by most people after its first issue). Don’t worry people, it is gonna make a comeback with the second issue soon.

Nevertheless, we landed up talking about how things have changed over the years. “Look at us,” was the justification to what our conversation was about.

True, “look at us,” just a few years ago, this us, were a bunch of teenagers only worried about how to miss school the next day or what western wear would be best suited to watch a basketball game at the swimming pool.

And “look at us,” today, in kira, sitting at Thimphu’s fine Art Café, sipping on coffee with our very own earned money and talking about work.

This was not us a few years ago.

A few years ago, we will be sitting in one of Hong Kong market’s shady restaurant, sipping on less milk- more water coffee and talking about boys. (Not that we don’t talk about boys anymore) This us would clean the house, help our mothers cook, help dad with gardening, wash the family car and be a good girl all week long just to go out dancing on Saturday at All Stars.

And today, we don’t even mention All Stars; it is rather embarrassing to even talk about it just randomly. Why? Because, today there are new discos to go to, with better music and more decent crowd.

Like I was telling my friend, All Stars was the place why we learnt to groom ourselves, dress properly and learnt to be the in-thing in town.Sitting outside the Zone, watching teenagers dressed in the latest trends often reminds me of myself when I was also a teenager.

Ofcourse, the skirts have become shorter and the tops a lot smaller.

Despite my age, I too try to be still in fashion and I have often dressed myself in the shortest of skirts and smallest of tops. Somehow, this teen fashion is only meant for teens as they look far better than I do.

We have come a long way now, we both agree on it.

It’s been a while, since we have got dressed before a week to the big day. It’s been a while since we have got butterfly in our stomach just looking at Mr. Happening pass by. It’s been a while since we have been grounded by our parents. At the age of 24, I know it’s not healthy to feel so old. “Life begins at 40,” we tell each other.

Yeap, it sure does, so if life actually begins at 40, we still have 16 more years to feel young.

Once another high school friend came and asked me if it’s normal to find a girl six years younger to him hot. I was like, “dude I have my eyes on my nephew’s friends, it sure is normal.”

So I look at my life before and now, I was once a girl with dreams, a girl with long hair ( I don’t know if this was necessary), a girl with a family, a girl without a driver’s license, a girl without a job and most of all just a girl.

Today I am someone who has fulfilled her dreams (well a larger part of it), a girl with a driver’s license and a car, a girl with a job and a girl who has become a woman. From a little girl who played in the dust, I have become a woman who doesnot play at all.

I have achieved what I have wanted and I have lost what I have wanted to keep. I have grown physically as well as mentally, become a woman from a girl.

And yet there are times, when I am still this little girl my father once used to know, the little girl who loves to play in the rain. The little girl who plays boxing with her three year old son and the little girl who still cries when her mother screams at her.