Basically, birthdays make me feel old and crap, and turning 32 this week is like landing a hangover without ever having been to the party. Since I'm all grumpy and morbid my best friend and her husband take me to an island, and that's where I'm writing this. Maybe this is time to self-reflect but I decide against it as that'd only give me a headache or my narcissism a shot in the arm and so I wade into the ocean and float on my back and think of how everything in the end, you know, works out.

I didn't always feel like this. I mean, the last lousy optimistic bone in my body went out with a big bang last year. So I'm surprised The Grins are coming on. It's like all those nihilistic literary heroes of mine, Roth and Ellis and Celine lost me to an island. I'm sure they'd appreciate that, literature losing out to geography. On the upside, the downside will return as I head home to Bombay but right now I'm just riffing on what Celine wrote in Journey to the End of the Night: "Death is chasing you, you've got to hurry, and while you're looking you've got to eat, and keep away from wars. That's a lot of things to do. It's no picnic." However, this morning I'm thinking, it's a picnic, just bring your own sandwiches, loser.

So if you find yourself in the same shark-infested stretch of the ocean as me and we jam into each other's snorkel gear and then we get talking and you ask me what I got out of my 32 years on this planet then I'd say: Hurry along. I'd also tell you to go vegetarian. And drink one glass of red wine every evening for good health, and a few more in case your body doesn't get the point. Do yoga. Spend one summer in Rome. Fall in love even if it brings down the walls of your house. The symptoms of love are the same as for extreme fear: breathlessness, a racing pulse, an adrenaline kick. I don't know if I mean that to be encouraging but at least I'm honest.