Skip to main content

Old man, wait

An old tree in my village

When I was in my late twenties I used to long for death. I didn’t want to go on beyond my thirties at least. Middle aged people were the greatest bores I had ever come across and I didn’t want to reach that stage. Moreover, I worked as a schoolteacher in Shillong in those days. The remuneration was a pittance whose lion’s share disappeared as house rent right at the beginning of the month. The end of the month would usually demand some tightening of the belt. Not a very charming existence even without the boredom added by the middle-aged moralists of various hues.
My middle age turned out to be the best period of my life, however. Life proffers interesting ironies. I landed in Delhi at the age of 41 with nothing more than some meagre savings and an attenuated willingness to experiment with life. The job I received at a residential school in Delhi had the charms of a Homeric Siren: at once enchanting and enslaving. The enslavement was as much a delight as the enchantment especially for middle-aged people. Psychologist Erik Erikson theorised that middle age is the period when people want to experience volunteering, mentoring, and making social contributions. Few other places can offer you more opportunities for those than a residential school.
Now I am a senior citizen by my country’s official reckoning. I live in a funny country which, instead of helping ‘senior citizens’ to take care of themselves, makes them pay literally breath-taking taxes for health insurances. As soon as I turned 60, the GST on my health insurance jumped to about Rs4000! My country seems to be telling me that it is time for me to leave the place altogether. My insurance agent tells me that it’s going to be much higher next year unless our very “caring” Prime Minister condescends to cut some of his Himalayan taxes which is not a likelihood at all.
The juvenile death-wish doesn’t care to haunt my soul anymore, maybe because there is too much insurance to sustain me. There are no serious worries, in fact. All those people who wanted to reform my recalcitrant soul for decades have apparently given me up as irredeemable or too old a dog to learn new tricks. The best thing I love about this senior citizenship is precisely this liberty or liberation from missionary spirits. [I hope after reading this they won’t take out their worn-out cudgels against me. Mercifully, most of them have grown old like me and must have also realised the futility of their missionary zeal.]
A contemporary of mine sent me a WhatsApp message this morning that 60-70 is the most productive age of a person, 70-80 being the second-most productive period. The claim was attributed to a study published by New England Journal of Medicine. I checked the claim online but could not determine its veracity. It is true, however, that some of the best novels were written by people in their sixties.
Psychological research says that “the potential for high-functioning brain activity peaks in our 50s but remains high until our 90s and functional into the 100s”. That is for the above-average brains, okay? “The average person peaks at 30 and declines to a non-functioning state by his or her late 80s.”
It looks like I have to wait for another 20 years to see whether my brain is above average. That’s as good a reason to go on as any other.




Comments

  1. जितेन्द्र माथुरSeptember 2, 2020 at 8:14 AM

    Nice sharing Sir. People like me can get insight into the functioning of human-life and the world around from this account of yours.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 2, 2020 at 8:26 AM

      I have a strong feeling with sufficient rational backing that old age can be an interesting phase, more interesting than the others perhaps. We just need to be a little more patient and enduring. Thanks for your appreciative words. They help too.

      Delete
  2. Rahul BhatiaSeptember 2, 2020 at 1:27 PM

    Age is just a number so carry on regardless:)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Harsh Wardhan JogSeptember 19, 2020 at 11:03 AM

    Good read!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
24 comments
Read more