Subir Roy: Life begins at sixty

OFFBEAT

Some of my earliest memories are of a small town in West Bengal, Rampurhat, where my father got posted in the early fifties. There was no electricity and in summer both the courts (my father was a judge) and my school began early in the morning and gave over by midday. We tried to sleep out the afternoon by first splashing water on the floor and then spreading out reed mats (madur) which had been kept immersed in a trough of water to make them as cool as possible.

Over 50 years later, we have booked a flat on the top floor of a Kolkata apartment block. Given the city's weather we know that for most of the year the place will be a furnace by the time the sun goes down. We are reconciled to having to instal more than one air-conditioner. We hope not to go bankrupt by using them as sparingly as possible, banking heavily on the knowledge that these days ACs are very energy-efficient.

When my father retired at 58 he was filled with great remorse because he felt he had ceased to be somebody. His judge's chair on the raised platform in the courtroom had been the centre of his life. He was lucky to find a new mooring in his life by getting involved with the affairs of his guruji's ashram. His great achievement was to be able to build a new ashram for his guruji on the banks of the Ganga.

I am filled with excitement at the thought of turning 60 in the not too distant future. I look forward to actually reading some of those books which I have bought over the years and which my wife has challenged I will never read. I look forward to writing much better researched stuff. The internet has brought the world's knowledge to your worktable. All you need to do is trawl the world wide web and collect the necessary information.

But most of all I look forward to travel without the thought of leave running out. Till my undergraduate days I can recall us, as a family, going on only two travelling holidays. One was to Puri for a couple of weeks and the other was to the Dehra Dun-Hrishikesh-Hardwar triad. The adventure part of the trip was taking a small bus to Narendranagar where I had meat curry and rice (the religious places were completely vegetarian) and from where I got the most memorable view of the Ganga in my life. Today, I understand there is a luxury spa resort there.

In travelling after 60, I have to properly explore the Sangla valley in Himachal, and also take the great round trip from Shimla to Manali down the Hindustan Tibet road past Lahul and Spiti. I have to find out if upper Sikkim is as great as it is whispered to be. And I have to discover Arunachal, which I have been promised is the most unspoiled part of sub-Himalayan India.

When I set out to be a scribe in my college days my friends warned me: Seeing your name in print is fine but will it earn you a living? If that was adventurous in a way, our son has done one better. He has taken a step to fulfil the dream he has nurtured from his high school days, of going into the world of cinema and theatre, by joining a course for film direction. All we could do as parents was to persuade him to get a normal BA degree "and then do what you like."

Life was supposed to begin at 40 but for India and its midnight's children like me, give or take a couple of years, life with all its promise and adventure seems to be beginning at 60. I will drink an extra peg to that tonight. My father, of course, never touched a drop of the stuff in his life.

subir.roy@bsmail.in