Guess there is something
about the thirties..you know deep down that if you go by the average life
expectancy of an Indian female, half your life is probably spent, expired,
lived or experienced..depending on how you would like to look at it. And the
events of the day and years make you start to wonder which side of that
de-famed thirties do you belong to?
There is something mixed
about your thirties that it is difficult to draw out the contours of your
existence….its definitely not the ‘sunny side’ when you count the calories
instead of the ‘thirty’ wonders of ice cream flavours glistening through the
glassy parlour freezer boxes! It’s definitely the wrong side of thirties when
your visits to the physiotherapist and medical shops outnumber your visits to
the cinema halls and random parties! When you start flipping the food packet
around to take stock of the sugar, salt and all sort of chemicals composition (compounds
that neither mattered nor existed in your twenties)…when you start reading
health digests and reach a state of paranoia bordering on Hypochondria
(unnecessary worrying about illness…even I didn’t know that there was a term
for it)..when the groovy numbers of your adolescence comes back as ‘retro’ on
local radio…you know that the dreaded middle-aged thirties have probably
landed!
You also realize the
difficulty of being a ‘thirty someone’…what was a piece of cake in your
twenties becomes an uphill task in your thirties…a simple outing, a backpack
tour, a day of ‘nothingness’, an impromptu guitar class..all need days and
months of contemplation and detailed planning…not to mention the considerations
of your employer, your home, your child etc…….’impromptu’ becomes a word of the
twenties as you grow deeper into your thirties! Your days are no longer yours
to own, to enrich or squander as you feel!
But in all fairness there
is a beautiful strength and yellow sunshine in your thirties…you finally grow
out of your adolescent fears of ‘acne’, fashion sense and the overpowering need
to ‘belong’! Suddenly, you find a sense of ‘balance’ in the weird imbalance of
life, career, family, character, ambitions and an array of such definitions of
life..and you also start to believe in the concept of ‘you’..the need to become
‘you’ surpasses all the other convoluted (sometimes confused) versions that you
kept creating for yourselves..and you reach a limen of the thirties..
But this moment of
realization also brings along a tornado of ambitions and expectations that your
daily mechanic life falls short of…you are ‘never’ in the moment..you dream of
entrepreneurship when you attend ‘so-called’ strategic meetings…you whip up
images of vagabondism and aimless travel as you suffer in the daily commute of
home to work..you think ahead of ‘friendship’ sessions and gang reunions as you
sit at home and grab a late night meal! It is never enough in your thirties…
the time, the relationships, the interactions, the achievements, the success,
the experiences..you create difficult milestones of individual, personal,
professional zeniths and start living in constant battles and fictitious races
within!
