LIFE REALLY BEGINS AT 40.....

 By Dr. Jyoti Patil

When I read Dr. Suchitra Mehta’s touching write up ‘Life After 40’ I became nostalgic about an incident which happened some 25 years back. Yes it is true that life today has become so superficial and shallow that one does not find a true friend or relative with whom one can confide one’s secrets or share one’s feelings. To get such a friend who can share all happy and sad moments with you is becoming a distant reality. We are all busy in our own tangles and troubles that we don’t have time to see or help others in their problems.

It is rightly said that life really begins at forty. At forty you are at the crossroads from where you can look back and see that all your childhood you were busy studying and playing. It is a carefree phase of life which Shakespeare has called ‘A Whining Schoolboy unwilling to go to school’. Then as you were young, serious studies and serious affairs occupied your life. Next came your career and as soon as you settled down marriage came. After marriage you had to plan for children and the moment children came into your life, you stopped thinking about your own likes and dislikes as the children occupied the place of preferences. But when you got your children also settled down comfortably in life you feel a little relaxed and get time to think to spend life more meaningfully than before. It is this phase of life when you start your life anew. You have plenty of time for yourself which was till then consumed by various time bound obligations and responsibilities. But for my ‘Pretty Woman’ I don’t know when life began.

I remember when I was busy in the second phase of my life, preparing for my career and doing my post graduation in a local college, I used to see a saree clad pretty woman with long hair going towards the direction of my college. I had my table tennis partner from Chemistry department and sometimes I used to go to her department to call her for practice and there I noticed the pretty woman who was a lecturer there engaging MSc. classes. Then I gathered more information about her that she was a fresh appointment, very talented in her subject and an excellent teacher. I tried to get closer to her as I was highly impressed by her simple demeanour. I started wishing her whenever I happened to go to Chemistry Department. But after six months I came to know that she was getting married, I felt elated for her but I also came to know that she was leaving her job and going to Nagpur after marriage as her husband was working there.

Time passed by and I also got married and luckily I also came to Nagpur. I had almost forgotten about my pretty woman. After I settled down I tried to get a job and I got it quite comfortably in a local senior college. I was appointed as a senior college lecturer there. My institution being unique in many ways follows Swami Dayanand Saraswati’s teachings by holding hawans, assemblies, prayers and spiritual discourses and is dedicated to the service of giving complete education (from prep to PG) exclusively to girls. Even the teachers are all women so that girls may get a secured and safe place of learning.

There I saw my pretty woman and I was surprised to see her there. I gathered that she is a fresh appointment in school. She was entirely changed. Her lovely face was wrought with worries and tensions. Her long hair was reduced to a small plait. She was not the same as she used to be during my college days. I learnt later that she got an appointment in high school but has been given only 8th and 9th standard classes to teach. I went to meet her. She immediately recognized me and expressed her happiness to see someone from her native place. She then narrated her story after her marriage.

She was happily married in a nice middle class family and she had her family responsibilities so she could not continue with her career. Then she was blessed with two lovely daughters and became busy in taking care of them. Time went by and they also became independent. Then it was felt that to meet the increasing needs of the family she should continue with her career. But it was too late by then and she could only manage to get a school teacher’s job now. I felt extreme pity to see such a talent go wasted. A person who was teaching MSc classes some twenty years back is teaching school children. I don’t know what kind of job satisfaction my pretty woman is getting now but it is sure that she has paid for the early 40 years of her life and now after 40 what remains is to ponder and prepare for something better in life.

(Article published in Daily HITVADA, on 11th Sept 2008)