I am at an important stage of my life. I will soon be a sixty year old person. Sixty..an age when a person retires from his job. An age when they say in India that a person has become "sathiya gaya", which means that he has gone bonkers. It is believed that the person who has turned sixty is now capable of being a bit silly, and not in total control of his senses and therefore his decisions would not be very judicious. I guess that was in the days of yore when expectancy of life was not very high. Not any longer...hopefully!!
Such a lot has happened in my life. I have crossed various stages from childhood to youth, to middle age and now I am on the last leg of my life's journey. Notice, I don't use the word old age?
So many people have touched my life. So many people have made a difference in my life. I was born in a family, then had my own family and now the family has grown.
I met people when I stepped out of my home, in school, and in college, and then my work place, their work place, while travelling, or in the market. While travelling I met the man who later became my husband. In school I met my friend who remains one to this day.In fact in the Bank I met the person who became my sambandhi, or my son's father in law!!
I met loads of people when I took up a job. The numbers simply grew by leaps and bounds as I was working in a Bank. A Bank exposes you to a vast multitude of people from different walks of life. Some became friends, others became acquaintances and some just remained customers of the Bank. Yet a lot of them left an indelible mark on me as a person and changed me in some ways.
My friends from childhood are zilch. I am in touch with only one friend from School final and college. Whenever I meet her or talk to her, we continue as if there was never a break in our conversation. She was and remains my dearest and oldest friend. We know each others family very well as we used to be in the boarding school and college hostel together. After joining the Bank, I made a number of friends from our batch of 50 Probationary Officers. Meeting them is as if we had never parted. There are no airs, or snares or personality clashes, or ego hassles, with them. We are simply friends, who trust each other, and love being together.
People who touched my life and made the maximum difference to me have been those who are closest to me. Every one has their own opinion of me. It does not make me what I am. It is just their thinking about me. This is how I appear to them. It is not me.
One person always tells me that I can never be happy, I shun happiness. I presume that for that person I must appear to be unhappy and a sad human being.
Another always says to me" Shant Gadadhari Bheem" I must appear to be a terribly hot headed person, who is always ready to be in a fight.
One person says I have the attitude of "I, me, poor thing", that person must be thinking that I am such a miserable and persecuted person.
One person says that I am such a short tempered person that it would need a lot of tolerance for people to put up with me.
One person thought that I was too dark and therefore quite an eyesore.
Some people are not vocal about their opinion, yet they surely have an opinion about me.
Good, bad, happy, unhappy, whatever people may think about me, is what they think about me. I am someone else. To me, I am the best, the most loved and the most perfectly happy person.
Think of me as you will, think of me as you wish...simply think of me.
Do not let me go out of your thoughts.
I exist for you because you think of me. Without this...I will not be there at all.
I know, those who tell me about these characteristic, only think well of me, and wish that I would help change their opinion about me. I surely will, as these people are a part of my life and love me a lot. Yet I am a whole person, with something good and something not so good. I try and try and someday when I achieve that perfection, will be the day when there will be nothing left for me to strive for...wait, people, I am getting there.... till then accept me as I am.
I have really enjoyed my journey up to now. I have seen so much, met so many people, helped so many people and achieved more than what I had thought I would. Looking back, I have no regrets whatsoever. All my decisions were good. All that I did was good. I have excelled in whatever I did. I have only good memories of my life. Some important people of my life have left, some have parted after misunderstandings, and some simply drifted away. The reasons were often beyond my control. Yet, looking back, I do not have any regrets. Those that are with me, are mine truly. Those who have left were never mine.
Three cheers Varsha, you have done well!!!
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