40s aren't the new 20s!

Well, someone said 40s is the new 20s and like a fool I believed them! Till the oft bothering back called me to reality. 

So when the clock stuck 12 last week on the 6th of June, I completed the 4th decade of my life. 40 years! I mean, how did that happen?I feel like it was only yesterday when the dad was pulling my leg saying this could be the last bachelor birthday of my life. I was only 24 that day. The best friend and I just cut a random bun with a blade to celebrate that day. Well, bachelor days and age 24 just needed a bun and a blade with the friend. Life was that simple.

Suddenly, when life hit 40, there were the in-laws, the wife and ofcourse the two little munchkins calling me appa. Life seems a lot more complicated. 

Can the 20s ever come back? Can I go back to the days of simple, unfiltered independence? When nobody bothered about what and where I ate and how much I spent. That night, the friend and I just had a random walk down the usually buzzing chennai street at midnight looking for some cooked chicken, doing random talk about dreams, future, love and marriage. After the meaningless walk, we realised the clock had just stuck 5:00 AM and went off to play ball and then slowly back to our day jobs. The body wasn't tired. The mind never panicked. Life was lived at a different pace; it was listening to a different drummer - the heart - then had very minimal rhythms to dance to. 

But 40, sounds different. I'm sure the stress on the letter 'F' to pronounce forty is intentional. It was meant to scare people. To shake off the rust and wake up to reality. The aching back, the tiring legs, the bills to pay, the food needed to be on the table, the wife's nerves, the presentation at work and the children's tantrums. 

No, I don't wish to go back to my twenties. Twenties had their time. I loved it. It was refreshing. Dreams in the middle of the day and mindless chatter in the middle of the night were exhilarating. Independence and freedom of that age were surely the best of times. Yet, no, I don't want to go back to those days. 

Rather, I look forward! Forties aren't going to be flowery. The insufferable back can only go worse. The tantrums of children I have heard will only go worse as they grow older apparently. The parents are going to fall and break bones. They are going to be unbearable. The realities of life are more stark in the forties I suppose; and yet, I look forward to it. 

No, not for some fetish about wisdom and ageing, neither some frivolous understanding of the world. It is just the calmness of mind which comes off with the grey hair and the wider appreciation of world around and the people who come with it. The 20s can never give me the thrill of my children's effervescence or the quiet and longing conversation with the wifey. That age of dare could never replace the victories of the Mind over the aching body. Ah, the thrill of learning that my mind can overcome a hurt knee and still win a badminton match! Perhaps I was late. But only later life lessons has taught me that. The concept of Mind over matter! The concept that you fight till you win and not quit when it pains. The insecurity of the young adulthood pales in comparison to the understanding of security. The lessons of the 20s are pale compared to the life lessons of the older populace. 

Hence, I look at my parents and in-laws and my uncles and aunts with a lot more respect. I look at the world with a lot more awe. I have bigger, and yet more realistic dreams. Responsibilities don't shrink me anymore. Rather they invigorate me. So, here I come 40s. I'm ready to conquer!

No, 40s aren't the new 20s. Ain't meant to be!

 

The four year old boy!

He completed four! Time flies. Not sure how the four years passed by so quickly. It has been one heck of a journey. 

I still remember that day he was born, like it was yesterday. I tried that day to be as calm as possible. The friends who were with me on that day, though, immediately knew I was nervous. Wifey went into labour in the wee hours of the morning, and the fellow came into the world quite early in the morning. From that day till today, he has always been quick-footed. Perhaps he kicked his way out of his mother's womb. 

I wasn't ready for him. I always thought it was going to be a girl. I wanted a girl. Badly! Somehow, the inner me was convinced about the girl. We, stupidly enough, had a name ready only for a girl. I told you, I wasn't ready for him. We weren't ready for him. 

They handed me the baby first. I held onto the baby, like it was my everything. "Yenna kuzhanthai, sollunga (Please tell what baby is it?), the nurse who handed the bundle to me asked. Then it hit me. It is a boy! BOY! "Wait! What! How did this happen? I mean, I am not ready for this," my mind ran amok. To worsen matters, he looked exactly like me. It almost feels like I see myself in him every time, and that's scary. 

The maze my life had been till then, suddenly had a spanner thrown at it. Another life to think about and take care of. A life full of energy. The legs of his, I tell you, never stop running and jumping. He jumps, he climbs, and he runs behind a ball. That is all he wants. To run behind any ball. Yesterday he had four balls in his hands at 9PM bedtime, and he wants to sleep carrying em all in his hands. My wife often says boys are crazy; I never understood it till I saw this replica of myself in flesh and in blood. 

My joy, and my sorrow, my laughter, my anger, my victories, my failures, my hopes, my fears, my anxieties, and my peace, everything my life had been in the last four years had been the boy! 

I have heard people say one will have to have a girl to feel fatherhood! And now that I have a girl as well, I perhaps understand that statement better. 

But have a boy, I say, and you will feel craziness and adventure. 

Happy birthday, little 'K'. Here is to many more years of a life of adventure and running behind those round objects called balls. 

The boy and his adventure toys. 

The young parent!

That photo evoked intense memories. A family photo with my mom, brother, uncle, aunt and a few cousins. Damn, we all looked so young. 

The mother looked the youngest. She looked all of 25, perhaps she was 30 then. I looked 10. My mom wasn't the youngest by Indian standards when she had her children. She was a medical doctor and so had many more years of education, which prevented her from getting married early, as is the case with almost all Indian women of her generation. Yet, it hit me hard. She was at least 10 years younger when she had her first son than I was when I had mine. 

With the wisdom and understanding that only grey hairs and time can give, I huff and puff every time there has to be a decision on my children. Will it be the right one? Am I doing it well? Are we being too strong? Are we being too brash? So many questions go through my mind, and I know wifey asks similar questions too every time we do something for our children. 

How was it having children when you were so young and Naive yourself? A whole lot of my mom's patients became parents when they themselves were in their teens. How was it going through the emotional trauma of having to guide a child when you yourself are lost in the big, bad unknown world?

That picture was taken in New Delhi, thousands of kilometres from our place. None of us knew the language spoken there. In that picture, when all of us cousins and aunts were sitting and facing the camera, my uncle is seen standing, facing elsewhere. He would have been 40. Having two teenage children (my cousins) sitting there with us.  I'm just trying to understand what he would have been thinking at that particular moment. A young male. Not knowing the language. Taking his sisters and extended families, five children, and three women on a trip to a faraway land. The entire burden of keeping the family safe and secure is on him. Imagine what a burden that would have been for a not-so-old man then himself? How many much younger people had to do all these and much more for their own families. 

As and when a child is born, so is a parent! Through the complexities of managing one's own life, the intricate world of another young human being is thrust onto the parent. Sometimes life takes most of us through without giving time to intentionally think through what is being taught and what is being learnt by our children. Sometimes our lives are too complex to actually think about anything else. 

When I reminisce on the family picture, I realise through all the complexities I mention here, the mom, the uncle and all the aunts in that picture had done a fairly decent if not a great job at parenting. We have all become pretty decent adults ourselves. 

I wish we, the children in that picture, could get such grace as that was attributed to the moms, uncles and aunts. I wish there would be a family picture that our children will look at a few(many) years from now and say, "Phew, my parents have done a pretty decent job of parenting". 

Till then, I hope, wish and pray that my brothers and sisters and I navigate not only our treacherous lives with aplomb but also steer our children's as well. We are, after all, blessed with a few more years of wisdom, knowledge, understanding and grey hairs to do that job than perhaps all my forefathers ever had. 

A different world this!

 "My life is so happy, I'm helping people and saving lives", said Justina, a teardrop peeping through her eyes.

 Justina manages the High-Frequency Radio Station; I know; I understand; I was equally surprised listening to her story as much as you, dear readers. How does someone operating a radio station save lives? Welcome to this world. The world of radios. 

"There are remote places in the highlands which don't connect to mobile telephones. People might have to walk one or two hours to get a signal. Hence, the primary mode of communication for such villages is through High-Frequency Radio waves. So MAF Technologies, the Organisation that employs Justina, has installed radio stations in many of these villages. Most of these radio stations are kept along the airfields. Yes, airstrips, the only mode of transport for them is a small aircraft. 

In times of emergencies, like last month, when a wild pig had bitten a lady, the villagers go to the airstrip agent. The agent calls the MAF Technologies monitored radio station. If the case needs emergency transportation of the patient, like in this case, the flight operators are informed over the radio about the emergency and emergency air ambulances are flown in. If the patient just needs an assessment, a doctor is patched up on the radio for long-distance assessments and advice. 

Even in non-emergency situations, when any person in a village, wants to pass on a message to someone in the bigger towns, the radio stations are used, again through the airstrip agent and through MAF Technologies, and in most cases Justina. "I monitor the radio station from 7.45 am to 5 PM, but we will have to monitor it 24*7*365 and hence other staff pitch in and take turns during weekends and evenings", Justina concluded, in her measured radio-trained tone. 

At a time when Non-Governments are scoffed upon and a generation for whom altruism and selflessness are foreign words, there is a motley group of men and women monitoring radio stations and saving lives. 

The numbers over the years have come down! Cell phone penetration is happening, albeit slowly. But Justina is sure that there are still villagers who will need her and her ilk. Last year had 368 calls, out of which 116 were medical evacuations and 69 were medical assessments done over radio. 

I could not complete my graduation. Violence in my village at that time did not let me complete it. My home was burnt. My parents could not afford to send me to university. It is God's grace that I ended up joining here. I'm happy. I save lives. Justina concluded. 

It is indeed a different world! A world where quiet, simple and sincere people like Justina are fighting odds to save lives.