Sixty: At the Threshold of Dusk

When does a day begin? When does it end? Does dawn arrive with the distant blush of the dark sky? Or does it set in when a young sun hesitatingly appears at the horizon? Does the waning of sun’s warmth announce a day’s demise, or does it linger till the last light is sucked out?

Day is imperceptibly born in dawn and dissolves as furtively in dusk. Autumn unhurriedly begets winter. Winter disappears in spring. Spring after a protracted labour births summer that unbeknownst metamorphoses into autumn.

When does life begin? Does the beat of foetus’ heart announce a new life? What about the three-day old embryo or a single-celled zygote after fertilization of the egg? Or each of the ova and the millions of sperm? Each of these throbs with potential of bringing forth a new life.

Nature goes on cycling in its rhythm, ceaselessly and imperturbably. These relentless revolutions, pursued over eons, give rise to variations. Newer elements born with their unique cycles mingle in the grind of universe.

Nature doesn’t demarcate the stages in its cycles. Each, born of the foregoing, dissolves into the next.

Our lives are an infinitesimal blip in this grand spectacle. Stars, aged millions of years, appear and disappear like bubbles in this scheme. Seen against this, insignificance of human life measured in a few decades, though not incomprehensible, is deeply tragic – were all those rituals of life: Tribulations and comforts, triumphs and failures, struggles and achievements, that made life meaningful, of no import?

 

Like the day and night, the summer and autumn, our lives move silently from childhood, youth, adulthood, to elderly. None of the terrain traversed has its area marked. One doesn’t wake up on a morning and finds that his hair has turned grey, his memory has lapsed, his gait is unsure, and his vision blurred.

I have noticed the insidiously growing ravages of age in my mind and body, for some years now.

I turned sixty this week.

Ticking clock, as its needle jumped the midnight hour, pushed me into a new category overnight – an elderly citizen.

Maugham, at sixty, wrote in his diary, ‘It’s time to put my affairs in order, for this is the threshold of old age and I must settle my accounts’. Consequently, he set about writing Summing Up, chronicling ideas and thoughts that had shaped his life and writing till then. ‘With this book I shall have completed in sufficient outline the pattern I set myself to make’, he wrote. He added that though, he may write other books in future, he did not ‘think they will add anything to my design. The house is built. There will be additions, a terrace from which one has a pretty view, or an arbour in which to meditate in the heat of summer; but should death prevent me from producing them, the house, … will have been built’.

A life replete with outstanding accomplishments – an impressive oeuvre of books in Maugham’s case – can entertain the claim that it was lived as per a pattern. I do not delude myself in believing that I ever had a motif for my life in mind. A commonplace life is largely lived impromptu as it unfolds every moment of the day, week after week, month after month.

Moreover, sixty is not considered old today; merely beginning of the youth of old age. And even if a pattern existed in one’s life, sixty is too early to feel it is complete - I do not know if there ever will come a time in life when one can say it is. Nevertheless, sixty or thereabout, do usher in conspicuous changes in our lives, noticeable not abruptly, but when considered deliberately. To recapitulate our life-stories is not an indulgence anymore.

 

Looking back from afar, I do not feel my past as real. It feels as if I was made to do all I did, as if I were a puppet and the strings were being pulled invisibly, to push me here and then, there. Of course, this is all stuff and nonsense. I had the agency, as much as any man has or doesn’t, to do as I did, or didn’t, what I should or could have done. But I cannot shrug away the feeling of artificiality that deep past seems to acquire now.

I stand at the mouth of my memory, a deep, cavernous corridor, staring at its walls frescoed with the images of my past. Pictures in the distance are hazy. Blurred images of my childhood merge with solid outlines of my adolescence, and all culminate in the vivid kaleidoscope of adulthood. No pattern underpins this collage. But a coherent story does emerge. These images, experiences of my past, strung on the thread of my memory, form the narrative of my self, my life story.

Unfolding hustle-bustle of life doesn’t permit wilful reflection on our experience. Each impinges on our consciousness discreetly and disappears in the past. When young, past seems inconsequential and scraggy. Future stretches till eternity, plump with its possibilities of golden days and warm, silky nights. To live, is to inch towards this promised land that one is building by investing in present. 

At sixty, future is no more intriguing. It shrinks with every passing day. Fulcrum of life has moved forward. Past is now weightier and pulls at heartstrings more wistfully. Seen from distance of decades, shorn of judgements that immediacy had conferred on them, past now narrates a convincing story. To discover your self anew is an unparallelled comfort of elderly life.

In my youth, I often spent miserable time agonising over the failings in my nature, kinks in my constitution. I blamed these for the harrowing time, which came my way. Not infrequently I cursed God, in whom I believed then, who had made me the way it had. Seen from a distance, my own life seems otherworldly. Now, it is not difficult to appreciate how circumstances, and my inheritance, inexorably made me what I am.

Wise tell us we should be tolerant of our co-travellers. This is a lofty ideal. Those who achieve it, deserve our reverence. But as one ages, it is not difficult to accept yourself as you are and were in your youth. To be able to look at life’s sorrows and joys with equanimity is the greatest blessing that age bestows. Ability to parse life-events dispassionately but with an intimate longing, liberates the soul of the luggage it has been dragging for years. The air feels light, breathing is easier.

 

Anxieties of elderly are not light, but they do not embrace every aspect of living. In youth, when life lurched from one unknown shelter to other, every aspect of future presented unfathomable uncertainties. Most of these now resolved, life gains a poise with age. One can indulge in activities – that seemed too demanding or unprofitable earlier – only for the sake of joy they give. Life doesn’t seem to extend till eternity now. Goals are futile; Most will not be achievable in the time remaining to one. Consequently, process becomes the objective, source of contentment.

My hunger for books became keener this side of fifty. I now indulge in collecting books with a passion I did not know I possessed. Sight of books, neatly arrayed on my shelves, each eager to tell me a story I have never heard before, poised to fly me to unseen lands, quickens my pulse and adds spring to my step. When the thought that I will depart one day, leaving most of my books unread, troubles me, I find solace in the great bibliophile, Alberto Manguel’s words:

Ultimately, the number of books always exceeds the space they are granted. The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned. I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days.

Reading is a source of pure joy. Writing is an agonising struggle. I fell to the lure of this masochistic activity a couple of years ago. It is highly improbable that a person who begins writing in sixth decade would ever produce a worthy piece of work. But now, I have time and a patient mind to indulge in this tardy and frustrating work. The discovery that I could, after an inordinate effort, and occasionally, string words in sentences that seamlessly convey my thoughts, keeps me glued to my writing chair for hours on end, to produce a smattering of sentences. I do not know if I would have considered this worthy of my time in the hurly burly of life two or three decades back.

I learnt the joys of backpacking in Himalayas late in life, little short of fifty. I exhilarated in the newfound freedoms. I went giddy with pleasure, as I contemplated the numerous treks that lay in my future. If I could not plan a jaunt in a year, I despaired endlessly. Sometime back, an ageing spine, ominously announced itself, abruptly ending my fledgling backpacking adventures. This was my first acquaintance with an ageing body.

मुज़्महिल¹ हो गए क़वा² ग़ालिब

वो अनासिर³ में ए'तिदाल⁴ कहाँ

1. Weak   2. Parts of body 3. Elements 4. Balance

My body is now debilitated

Where is the equilibrium in its elements!

I sulked for some time. And then adopted cycling more vigorously – which till then I had courted desultorily. I discovered new gratifications for my desires. Last year, I cycled along a river in Germany for 500 kms. Bikepacking was as intoxicating as had been backpacking.

 

I'm a decade and a half older since the time I began trekking in mountains. Though tempted to surrender to fancies of wonderful cycling tours that await me, I resist the lure.

Sixty is not the dusk, but it is not the bright sunny noon either. Like Meer Taqi Meer, the eighteenth-century Urdu poet of Dilli, I will not go so far as to say that what is behind me was the night and day is yet to dawn.

अहद-ए-जवानी¹ रो रो काटा पीरी² में लीं आँखें मूँद  

या'नी रात बहुत थे जागे सुब्ह हुई आराम किया

1. Age of youth    2. Old age

Youth, I spent wailing; in old age, closed my eyes forever

Thus, awake till late in the night, I lay down to rest, as it dawned

 

Yes, the tide of the day is poised to ebb. But it will leave behind not only the flotsam and the jetsam: creaking joints, wobbly gait, blurry vision. But, also a composed, restful life, like the sea in low tide. To stroll in the soft glow of dusk, bask in the warm memories of past, joyfully watch the sedate days, as remain one, unfold peacefully, is a prospect I cherish. If not the high Himalayan passes, there would be few tranquil river valleys that would embrace shaky cycling of an ageing epicurean.

 

There is much that I have lost with age. But there is much I have gained too. If not sanguine about future, I am not worried about its uncertainties either. The day tried me with its vigour, tumult, and its ceaseless anxieties. These memories promise to ignite my eventide.

I have begun sailing the waves of a receding tide.