Let us paint you a picture. You're in a college canteen; you and your pal just sitting around... Your days are spent planning which movie to see after college and where to go for the holidays. Heartbreak is jointly shouldered, no summons are ignored, and every issue is discussed, especially this one: Where you'll all be in five years' time. You have it all chalked out. And in every one of those dreams, your pal is right beside you, changing jobs with you, getting married when you do, and you're positive you'll have babies at the same time. You can't wait to 'grow up'... And now, it IS five years later... you've dived head first into your career, and your buddy's settled with a new baby... You're at the opposite ends of a very wide spectrum. And you'd give anything to go back to that time in the canteen.

Different Reactions

The first thing that struck me when I visited an extremely close friend who'd just had a baby, was how very grown up she was... I hovered around uncertainly, while my formerly career-oriented friend contentedly changed her son's diapers, cleaned him 50 times a day, and fed him every few hours. I was swamped by conflicting emotions - I was overjoyed at her happiness, but selfishly, I wanted my friend back with no responsibilities, free to come and stay with me, to make on-the-spur-of-the-moment plans for holidays, shop for clothes for herself, not for her son, and listen attentively while I spoke of many things.

Other women too, have felt the change and struggled to adjust. "Suman and I have been close pals for a long time," Usha reminisces. "Both of us would often do things together on impulse... One evening, we were discussing Ahmedabad and the shopping there... And the next thing we knew, we were on our way to Ahmedabad in an unreserved train compartment! Things changed a bit when she got married, but we met up as often as possible... Then the baby came. I loved her too, but she most certainly took my friend away. It was even difficult to catch Suman over the phone. I wouldn't say we coped well.Initially, we didn't. I used to sometimes feel that I no longer really had her as a friend. She rued, sometimes, how much her life had changed."

Of course, some gals don't think anything really changes. Says Pracheta Sharma, TV journalist, "I love kids, my sister had just had a baby and when one of my closest friends had a baby, I was more excited to see the baby than my friend!"