On finishing college, some grew wings to fly to distant lands; others like me, sprouted roots. I remember the day the dice were cast: henceforth Landour was where life for me was going to be.
“New teacher?” short and stout Jagdish Babu asked. “Date of birth?” Taking my school-leaving certificate, he uttered a date, adding 60 years and, like a soothsayer, said, “That’s the day you retire.”
He was right, as correct as a broken clock, which gets the time right twice a day. Quietly, without fanfare, I had joined the ranks of the half-pay pensioners of the world. The next morning I was all dressed up with nowhere to go. “Going somewhere?” teased Tulika, our firstborn, giving me a cup of tea. “I’m off to my desk,” I lied through my teeth. Kind girl that she is, she made sure I got there.
Though I admit, I am not tired, re-treaded or even re-tired. Whenever I am in need of expert advice, I usually commune with myself, or the lovingly curated books in my library. Every once in a while I use the ‘dial-a-friend’ option, with interesting, albeit somewhat depressing results. “Give me a few minutes,” the friend replies. “I’ll call you back.” But he never does.
“Ah, he must be extremely busy,” I console myself.
Sometimes I wish growing old had taken a tad longer. Like it did for Balwant, a hard-working clerk at the Mussoorie Bank. Steadfastly, he refused promotions or transfers, hanging on for many years until he had become a fixture till he retired.
One day his colleagues gave him a farewell. It was a chips-and-chai affair in the after-office-hours-celebrations. From the tenor of the farewell speeches, one could be deluded into mistaking this for a welcome party for a fresher about to join the bank. It was not a get-rid party in honour of some over-the-hill fuddy-duddy being pitch-forked out.
‘Imagine the loan counter without Balwant.’
‘How will we carry on without him?’
‘What will we do from tomorrow without him?’
Trouble came knocking when Balwant took these whispers seriously. A few days later, visiting the Cambridge Book Depot near the bank, I bumped into his son who groaned, “My father insists on dressing up every morning to head here. He sits down on a bench in the veranda. That’s where I fetch him from every evening.”
Though no one has had to fetch me yet, as friends reassure me: “Age is just a number. Sixty is the new forty these days, Ganesh.”
How well I know that those twinges in the hinges are not growing-up pains, especially after I wake up on the wrong side of the bed. Thirteen-year-old Niharika suggests with a twinkle in her eyes, “Nana, let’s give you a spin in the dryer. It might rid you of those wrinkles or shrink you a few sizes.”
But spinning makes me giddy. So I chase her away, stubbing my toe against a table in the bargain. At last I bolt the door and settle down to a bit of undisturbed scribbling, only to realise that the Muses too have deserted me.
I reassure myself, “Slow down, old boy.”
Instead, I peer over those green hedges and listen to the faint music emanating from the Greyhead’s Club. At three score years and more, you cannot choose your own music, but the last dance is always yours.
Ganesh Saili
Author, photographer, illustrator
sailiganesh@gmail.com