Got in to get out with spectacles on the nose & the world looked not all the different yet there was some change. On the back of tablet blister when I couldn’t read even the MRP or the constituents, I’d tough time in chewing abuses along with tongue under my teeth. I could read the headlines but needed to put on lights even in the morning to read the news in details. Typing font had slowly progressed from 10 to 12 hardly making any note inside my gray matter. At forty I already became myopic.
I’d became a subject of mockery already at home. Car keys, newly acquired spectacles, wallet, mobile, hanky were the regular items of evidence of my forgetfulness. Prolonged family serials on TV prompted me to take stroll after dinner; family members termed that as my endeavour in keeping fit. But whatever they name it I’ve never taken them seriously, perhaps this is also effect of forty’s. Twice checked up my cholesterol, thrice blood pressure & six times urine & blood for perceived diabetics. ‘Emotions triggering you to undergo all these check is forty’s effect’, my friend who is at the brink of forty was telling confidently.
But the biggest & worst forty’s effect I perceived & that is when ever the girl I’m gazing sensually brings me down on the hard rock by her calling me ‘uncle’. I just hate the very word uncle. Recently I offered lift to a good looking alone girl standing on the road opposite college. I opened only the front left door making her sit besides me; keeping back door locked, thanks to central locking system. She tried to open the back door but couldn’t & sat on the front door only at last. I kept gazing at her as possible as one could while driving on the busy main street at twelve in the noon under scorching sun for five kilometers. She got down, smiled nicely, and shook hand till now it was excellent, why on earth did she say, ‘thank you uncle’. I needed to take up a bottle of Limca to cool me off, I prefer pesticide instead otherwise, & drove back all those five kilometers which I drove for her sake. It was sheer loss. Loss of petrol, time & more important loss of temper.
Well, my hairs have started receding, but you see I’m blessed with big forehead by birth if you don’t trust see my boyhood photo. Perhaps forty percent remaining hairs are gray but see, you must consider my truthfulness in not dyeing them. I’m still fit & fine. Even my coat & pants stitched at my wedding still fit me well, which I don’t to avoid being labeled as miser. Eat spicy even fish, chicken & mutton & digest easily. Take a drink or two in a week or two yet sleep tight on my bed not elsewhere. Work for eight hours yet get home smiling.
Yet, at forty I’m myopic. Perceived few good & bad things & this will take long to change them. Recently taken up religious & spiritual readings. My wife is pulling my legs, says ‘you are getting old who would bury himself in James Hadley Chase otherwise now chasing Yogi Arvinda & Ramkrishna Paramhansa’. But, I’m not giving up, pop up pills & go out in cold, get cold water bath, eat less to keep still fit, skipping fried & spicy items. Resolving every morning to get up early next morning to go for morning walk.
May I tell you, just between you & me, while shaving I perceive the skin I used to have is no more, false seven teeth start paining at the mention of forty. I even remember what I used to do looking at what my son is doing.
To truly note the change within, I take a wink at my mother just twenty years older than me. If at forty its new game we play once again, she’s twenty years old & I’m just born.
By
Vijay Yelmelwar
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