It was rakhi thanksgiving to my younger cousin Lakhi. I’d got up late after a late night – a luxury only retired people can indulge in. Late wake-up pushes everything back: the morning cuppa, morning chores and walk, breakfast, but who cares! I could wear the rakhis only around 3 p.m. and just before my pushed-back lunch.
I called my sisters one by one, who so lovingly had sent their brotherly love wrapped in symbolic rakhis. Being the only one younger to me, I called Lakhi first-up.
I thanked her lovingly and we reminisced a few vignettes of our growing-up days – from long, long ago. She enquired if I’d had my lunch and was readying for a siesta. “Neither,” I said, “still in office!”, and added impishly, “Just took a break from work to call you.” She was confused, paused, and said, “Oh, I didn’t know that – you’ve taken up another job! That’s nice, good to hear that!” We called off happily – for entirely different reasons.
I didn’t disabuse her mind and feeling of “goodness”, why must I? In the Indian mindset, retirement from a job means a host of things: sitting at home not knowing how to spend time doing nothing, and when time-pass is tantamount to twiddling your thumb. And almost synonymous with retirement from life – the besetting sunset with the sky turning dark and swarthy. I still recall the wife of a retired senior officer who came visiting us at home in Delhi. While taking leave she wore a woebegone look, adding dolefully, “We’re retired! Please visit us often.” She wasn’t the one who ever worked and retired, but she identified herself so completely with her spouse’s work/retirement that she was feeling the retirement blues inchmeal – perhaps even more!
Most retirees find it hard to adjust to retired life, especially if they’re the perks-and-position-happy kind. In a feudal hierarchy, the retiree is a lowly, pathetic creature in society’s pecking order. He’s a spent force, past shelf-life or sell-by/expiry date and of little material or social consequence. This even gets conscripted in the retirees’ consciousness.
Some canny retirees try to soften the blow by embellishing their visiting cards, grandly displaying their last assignation (invariably the highest perch attained) with ‘Retd’ in the smallest font size. The aim is aphrodisiacal – to shimmy people’s focus on the august perch and conjure visions of grandeur in their mind’s eye and thereby granting the retiree the comfort he once enjoyed but is (sorely) missing now!
I’ve run into august personnel with their security guards following them during the morning walk inside the secured and gated community of New Moti Bagh. Spare a thought for their immense manifest loss as retirees – not propitious for aged and aging hearts! If most ailments are psychosomatic, you’ve a perfect recipe here.
A friend’s plight around his ‘R-Day’ captured his turmoil. “I’ll now have to learn how to cross a busy road!” He was overstating his travails but he looked wan and verily lost – three-quarters of his macho self! He was alluding to his endowed loss of props and stilts.
To turn into a common citizen overnight is hard. The enterprising ones try making the most of this bad situation via ingenious jugaad, Indian babu-style – lingering on the blessed perks if they can: car, driver, security guard, domestic help, and so on.
This is awarded more as reparative courtesy. But over time they too peter away. The future stares back – hard and malignant. Unhappy days are back again!
This explains the scramble for post-retirement sinecures. But they too have an end, as longevity more often than not trumps employ, forcing them yet again to face life’s inevitable mulch.
I know of many re-employed (even re-re-employed) men knowing not how to expend the years ahead at 65 or 70 years of age. I empathetically hear their plight and suggest looking around for a job that’s co-terminus with their lives! But those are very seldom forthcoming.
The reality of retyring “office” is looking inward at self and life – best done in the ecosystem we live in. No need to look around for jobs or seeking external reinforcement(s). It’s the inner peace that’s germane. Embrace it unstintingly, without qualms. Life’s a package, with varying sell-by dates, each beyond the one last expired, but then there’s yet another, and still another sell-by to live for. That’s the bottom line.
It’s living in the present – not missing the past – that matter. The past cunningly has this uncanny habit of entrapping the present and taking the mickey out of life. Live and let live! Let death be the only irrevocable retirement. Today I feel blessed to have retyred – to live, and not merely exist!
mohanty_sudhansu@hotmail.com
