Life Begins at 40! - April 2016

Every time we round up our age at 20 or 30 or 40… our folks will comment on our landmark age! Oh! You have turned 20.. Finally moving out of your teens…. 30?? Oh the youth is passing!! Really?? I am in my mid 30s and it seems to be the best time of my life! But I was supposed to move out of my youth, and here I am feeling as young, energetic, and vibrant as ever…. The Optimist that I am, if I have to die at 80, then I am not even midway!! But I have learnt so much that for the rest of my life I have to only apply those learnings and I probably will sail through a very happy life!! Sounds so good to be true!! This year, my significant other half turns 40! And I am taking this as a reason to celebrate!! A lot of our friends thought I was silly to throw a bash for his 40th… he is not turning 50!! Why are you in a hurry! Well my father-in-law celebrated my 25th birthday with as much gusto telling me that it was indeed a landmark year… he told me then, that for you it is a landmark year you are beginning a new life with a new family (we got married six months before my 25th birthday) and you have begun what seems to be a great career for you! We have all the reasons to celebrate… As usual I agreed.. Anyway he did not live to see me turn 30, so I am glad we celebrated. I think celebrations need no reasons! Rather if the reason walks up to you, then might as well celebrate. The time is always right when the time is NOW…. To me 40 seems like a mid-point perfect time to celebrate the youth while it exists and early days to the wisdom that comes with the grey hair!! A perfect gathering to get your parents, family and friends together! At 40 when you look back, the first 20 years of growing up, schooling and higher education altogether seem like just the kindergarten years. Kindergarten – When life seems carefree, we have our parents to manage us right from getting us our clothes to our pocket money and ensuring that we do something with our lives!! Those 20 years we yearn for our freedom. We keep waiting for the day we will have our first salary deposited in our independent Salary Account! Our first tryst as we assume with the flavour of independence! But that’s really when the struggle starts… Most of us have a paradigm shift in our lives as we move steadily up the corporate ladder. We are out of our protected cocoon meeting new people, making new friends and there starts a whole new rollercoaster of a ride! From the mid 20s till the mid 30s we are busy making a life out of the platform that most fortunate of us got from our parents personally as well as professionally. 40 seems to be that age, when most have chosen their path in career as well as personal life, achieved certain milestones, made enough mistakes and risen above those, seen enough failures and enjoyed success!! This seems to be an interesting age at the median. Gunjar is exactly there and I feel he has reached that age of his life where I would like him to reap all that he sowed!! They say life begins at 40… the first 40 years of childhood are the toughest, as up till then we are only doing research!! Research!! And how!! I am not so used to calling him Gunjarav… most of his friends and colleagues either call him Gunjar or Gunjaa… and so do I. His parents fondly named him “Gunjarav” ! I have myself explained this to so many people I introduced him or his mention to, and I am sure he got a chance to celebrate his exclusive name innumerable times in his life. So for the records – Vihang (his dad) means a bird and Madhuri (his mom) means sweetness, therefore Gunjarav means “Sweet humming of a bird”. That makes his name very meaningful, but a tad unique! I would say more meaningful and well carved for him, as he indeed has been the apple of his parents’ eyes ever since his birth till date and that pleasure he still enjoys, sometimes over-ruled by our little bundles of Joy – our two sons. He spent his childhood at Opera House amongst a massive joint Nayak family, though those were his very early childhood days, he still has vivid memories of Opera House and the large family he lived with. Soon they moved to Santa Cruz where slowly and steadily life engrossed him amongst family, a huge friend circle, cricket, movies and studies! While his father has the maximum influence on him and his mother ensured he gets a grounded upbringing, another person who played a very affectionate and important role in his life is his Chanda maushi (aunt) whom he fondly calls ‘mimi’. She has looked after him as much as his own mother and she is equally fond of him perhaps the only person who makes it a point to address him with another name “Suyog”. That’s his second name fondly given by her, the Maushi’s prerogative as we all know! Coming from a well settled middle-class Pathare Prabhu family, he has enjoyed a very happy childhood quite alike most of us, of course I keep bragging to him that I come from a bigger and crazier joint family, therefore I had a crazier and much more fun-filled childhood than him, but I am sure that remains to be just a light argument. Gunjar is a very competitive person. He always likes to be better than the best. So that makes him compete with me all the time! Jokes apart, but his competitive streak helped him effortlessly cross the school / college days as well as his post-graduation. This competitive flash of his is very evident when he drives on the roads! He will not let any other car over-take him, nor will he keep gazing at another car’s tail light. All cars have to be behind his, and he will merrily gaze at them from his rear view mirror as he zooms on the roads. He is notorious for his flair with the traffic watchdogs much against my amusement. This is definitely one of his child-like characteristics that will never allow him to grow old. Talking about cars! Like all boys, Gunjar loves his cars, we all who know him, can trace back to his teens and re-live all memories till date with the help of the car arranging his life chronologically with the car he drove at that point in time. The first car that he ever made me sit in was a green colour Maruti 800 and our friends still remember the Green maruti 800 as 5120 (the only part of the number plate I recall). His car, the trending music of those days playing loudly in the car, usually the car is on its way to a movie hall and we friends inside the car, is how we used to and we still do spend a lot of our weekends. The friends have remained but surely multiplied over the years with spouses followed by our kids! His cousins say he used to love playing video games with them, and even today he fights with our sons to grab a chance at a video game! Cars, video games, movies, music, such are his favourite things to do, which make me wonder, has he really turned 40? Well his favourite things to do are actually his entertainment in his free time, what he mostly stays busy in is what he loves to do the most. That’s his job! He is irritatingly persistent, dreams big, very friendly, good at number crunching, can talk a lot and as I mentioned earlier extremely competitive. That makes him perfect for his role. He joined the Zee Entertainment Network back in 2001 as a Sales Executive. Started doing what he is best at that’s selling! Ever since then Zee has infected his entire system. He breaths, eats, drinks, & sleeps Zee, to the extent that I feared he will name our first born ZEE… Well he has come a long way professionally, he does not like to boast about his accomplishments but he has spent 16 long years in a tough organisation like ZEE and is today a Cluster Head across various channels and going steady strong! I am not mentioning this because I want to brag about him, but because a lot is left behind in this race to be the best. I think the time has come that he starts picking up all the things he has left behind to reach where he is. Of course I am aware that to stay where one has reached is in itself a tough rather persevering journey and he surely has bigger ambitions going forward. But life is constantly ticking, and time is not waiting. At 40 if we realize that we need to pick all that is left behind in the journey, be it friends, hobbies, travel the world (withme), taking care of our own health, picking up a sport, some art form, spending time with family then by the time we reach our half century, we may feel that our 50 years have been more fulfilling. And then 50 years old, are still young, and another 10 years to even turn a senior citizen. Suddenly life seems to be so well planned exactly how our insurance agent explains it to be while selling a policy! Off late, I have been writing less in Prabhu Tarun. While we have some new pens and minds giving us some wonderful articles, Gunjar always felt that I should contribute to the magazine in some form or the other. Prabhu Tarun is very close to his heart and therefore to me too. While it remains to be a tough journey to live up to all the requirements of the magazine, my article is more of a dedication. I dedicate this article to this wonderful bond that Gunjar shares with this magazine. This magazine probably is a part of his cosmic connection with his dad - some form in which he feels connected to him. It is difficult to cover the entire 40 years in a 2.5 page article, so many aspects of our lives I may not have touched upon, as that would open a Pandora’s Box of memories! Gunjar and I have been friends for around 20 years now of which we are married for 11 years! That makes us best friends first! We both being so closely associated with this magazine, I have written this article like I would about a close friend! He may want to kill me for giving so much space of Prabhu Tarun to talk about him, though it is not just about him, but it is about a life I feel is beginning at 40!