Social Pressures!

I've written about my apartment and my attempt to make friends before. I still continue to do that I mean to make friends. But no luck so far. We have discovered one big reason for it. We don't have children. No I am not kidding. People lose interest the moment they discover I am not a mother. What will they talk to me? How will I possibly make conversations about diapers, children refusing to eat vegetables (It doesn't help when I say that I used to refuse to eat vegetables too), the enormous pressure to find the BEST schools and to keep up with the intense syllabus in schools or the shots one needs to give the children. No they cannot so we don't have friends!

Sometimes I feel they are all ganging up with my parents, grand mother and a few very concerned friends to get us to be parents. These days I have total strangers insisting that I should have babies. Few weeks ago a watchman in Madurai whom I was trying to be polite to gave me the address of a fertility clinic in Chennai and a few temples whose dieties are sure to bless me with children!!! He added "you don't have too many just two is good enough" very helpfully.

And to make the matters worst most of our friends have had babies this year, some of them even second ones. So everytime we try to meet them we hear "oh I am taking my little one to get some vaccination" or if we do manage to meet them we end up spending our evening listening to the new antics the ten month old lad has been up to. (people it might be cute to you but not to your friends especially if you are telling them for the 5th time!)

It is not that I hate babies (even V isn't averse to children he's just terrified of them. He holds baby like its a bomb about to go off in his very hands, worrying the parents). Earlier I even used to talk about how cute the babies are, how wonderful they smell right after bath smeared with johnsons baby powder and all that (for the record I have taken care of lot of babies in my time thanks to all the cousins and aunts who had babies) Once I was talking on the same line with a new father. He was very happy to have a baby and was going gaga over it. So I joined in helpfully. After 15 min of the coversation he asked so how many children do you have? I didn't have any. I hadn't even met the man with whom I could possibly have the baby with. So it was quiet embarassing and I swore I will not do any baby talk unless I have one myself. But that is turning out to be an obstacle in my social life.

PHEW what and all people do to you to get you to have babies!!!