THE
HALF-CENTURY
A
2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri
‘If
this were a cricket match, the crowd would be roaring’
I never really thought about life after turning 50 until I
turned 50 – 50th birthday parties, to me (on the occasions that I
attended them), were full of decrepit old people trying desperately to make a
final attempt at having fun before moving on, and anyway I always thought I’d
be dead by then. Actually, I never thought about life beyond 37 years and
three-and-a-half months, because that was the next century.
My generation has lived in good times! We have heard Dylan
sing, seen Maradona play, and watched India first win the World Cup! We remember
Chandrashekhar bowling with Engineer behind the wickets, Wadekar at slip,
Venkat at gully, Solkar at silly point and Abid Ali at forward short leg –
easily the scariest thing in cricket for a batsman, especially at Eden Gardens
when 90,000 people screamed ‘booowwwwlllled’ as Chandra ran in. We grew up in a
highly subsidized higher education system (college fees – Rs. 15 per month,
monthly DTC bus pass – Rs. 12.50), and then earned liberalized salaries. We saw
the country open up to the world, and we travelled around it as a result; tales
of visits to London or Paris that inspired shock and awe now attract yawns, and
you have to go to Antartica or the moon (or take an all-girls trip around
Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan and Uzbekistan, as my wife did) to get people envious
any more. We had it easy; our grandparents were an awesome generation that
fought wars, brought in independence, and built institutions solid enough to
withstand the subsequent assault upon them. Our parents worked through cynical
times; license raj, the Naxal movement, and the decline in the public sphere.
Our children will likely grow up into a me-first globalized and
Internet-connected world with many opportunities but few jobs. Yes, we have
been lucky!
This paper looks at the changes in life brought upon when
one turns 50. Is this the beginning of the end, when we contemplate retirement
in a no-pension world? Do we pick up a liking for the opera, and for playing
golf? Is this when we move up a level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, hit the
‘self-actualization’ phase, and start doing things for the community and
society? I have had two years to ponder these matters, both in my own life and in
those of my peers, and these ponderings form the basis of this note. I have
categorized my thoughts into the important things – family, women, work, football,
food and booze. Here goes!
With Family: The
children grow up! In earlier times, my wife and I used to wait for them to
sleep and then sit down in peace, get a whisky, and chat about the day. Now
they wait for us to sleep and then sit down in peace, get on to the Internet,
and do whatever it is that kids do on the Internet these days (I have a ‘don’t
ask, don’t tell’ policy with mine). We don’t have to drive them around anymore,
but also have no idea of where they are. And I increasingly find that I have to
lecture or admonish them for activities (drunkenness, disorderly or sluttish
conduct, scatological utterances, inter alia) that I am in a position of little
moral authority to do by virtue of my own past behaviour on these fronts, and
they are well aware of this.
With
Women: The pretty young things of yore have, by now, turned 40 –
and you know what they say about turning 40, it’s when men rethink the value of
integrity, and women of virtue. This is the area of rich pickings for the
lecherous – anyone younger and you think you’re with your daughter, and as for
women in your own age group, what can I say except ‘yuk’? Be warned, though,
because attributes that kept you ahead earlier like the ability to fake
sensitivity, and having hair on one’s head, or a GSOH (the importance of this
as a turn-on for women is one of life’s abiding mysteries – can you imagine a
man giving a hang for whether a woman is able to make him laugh) decrease in
importance relative to good ol’ money and power.
At
Work: The harsh truth is that, if you haven’t made the C-suite
or its equivalent by now, you are never going to. At issue is how you adapt to
it. Earlier generations accepted this, and were willing to spend the remainder
of their professional lives in the rabbit warrens of middle management as their
bosses got younger in the interests of stability and security. My peers, on the
other hand, have been willing to make big changes at 50 – taking on new
professional assignments, seeking opportunities abroad, changing from job to
business and vice versa, inter alia. While these don’t always work out, the
ability to start anew is an important attribute at 50.
At
Football: This is where the decline is most discernible. In the 40s,
when one begins to slow down, one is protected somewhat by an ability to read
the game better and a fearsome reputation within one’s playing fraternity. At
50, one turns into an anachronism; the others are now 20-30 years younger and
look up to you less for your playing ability and more for your still being able
to ‘do it’. Is it time to shift over to golf? Not yet; you still have something
important in common with the others – that deep and abiding love for the game –
and there is much knowledge to be gained during post-game gossip from an
age-group whose idea of fun is to go off in a group to Bangkok and get
themselves a ‘hot and cold’ (figure it out yourselves) while there.
At the
Table: A love for good food, as with football, does not change
with age – it is just that one’s ability to do it justice tends to diminish. I,
for one, continue to search for super food and great service wherever I am, and
to delight when I find it in people’s homes and at simple eateries at ordinary
prices. I still check as to what’s on the menu when I am invited out, eat
vegetables only when I have no options, and avoid all healthy stuff. And as for
booze, while the pleasures of country liquor (such as santra, gulabo and kesar kasturi) have long given way to a
cold beer or a smoky single malt, I continue to derive considerable joy from
the occasional tipple, and my ability to hold it continues to be questionable.
I dread the day that I am forced to exercise control, count calories, and cut
out these small joys from my life.
And this, ladies and gentleman, is a short description of life
at the beginning of the wrong side of 50. For those of you not yet there, rest
assured that it is not necessarily a milestone requiring compliance with the
old Doors number ‘The End’ that also formed the music score of Apocalypse Now,
that went ‘this is the end, my friend’. And for those of us who are, let’s
continue to live life as it is meant to be lived; working hard and playing hard,
with experiences to be savoured, places to be travelled, knowledge to be
gained, battles to be fought, and hearts to be won.
