Calling it a day

Where will you head when retirement beckons?

My cousin is on a bit of a high these days. Both literally and metaphorically. Her dream house in the mountains, with a spectacular view from every window, is finally coming together. The woodwork is done, the plumbing works, the furniture is in place, the curtains have been hung, and the kitchen is on its way to being fully functional.

This is where she intends to retire when her work is finally done. Living blissfully among the clouds, breathing the fresh mountain air, cooking the vegetables she grows in her own back garden, going for long walks, spending endless afternoons reading and drinking green tea.

It sounds like an idyllic retirement, doesn’t it? Well, I guess it does to most people. But when she showed me the pictures of the house and the view – both amazingly beautiful – and told me of her plan, the first thought that popped into my head was: “Where is the nearest hospital?”

No, of course, I didn’t actually say that out loud. That’s not the kind of thing you say when someone you love announces the fulfillment of the dream of a lifetime. Stamping down on that voice in my head, I went through all the pictures and told her how spectacular it looked – and it truly did.

But all the while I was making the right noises I was thinking about logistics. How long it would take to get to a doctor? How she would negotiate the steep climb up if – well okay, when – her knees went? Instead of voicing these concerns, however, I restricted myself to encouraging her to persuade her sister and brother-in-law (both doctors) to buy a house nearby so that they could serve the tiny community’s medical needs.

Yes, I know, I sound like a complete nutcase. But the truth is that when I think of my own retirement plans, the one thing that takes precedence over all else is the proximity of medical facilities. I would never dream of moving to a faraway village in the hills, no matter how lovely, if I wasn’t sure that there was a good hospital a short ambulance ride away.

The other thing that I am obsessed about is having a single-level house. I have done my share of duplex living, trudging up and down from bedroom to living room and back again. But as my knees begin to twinge every time I walk down a staircase and my heart rate goes up when I walk back up, I have come to realize that I can’t keep this up for long. In another two decades I will need a living space that allows me to shuffle slowly from one room to another, without negotiating any steps along the way.

And where would I like this home to be located? Well, having being born and bred in one big city and lived in several others, I know that country pleasures are not for me. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy a trip to the beach as much as the next person. I love to take a break in the mountains when the heat in the plains gets too much. I read, I sleep, I take long walks, I revel in the natural beauty, I unwind, I detox, I distress. I slow my life down, tune out the static so that I can hear myself think. I get in touch with myself.

But after a week of this enforced calm, I start to get itchy. The quiet seems to weigh heavy upon me. I start to miss the energy and excitement of the big city. I begin to long for a visit to the cinema, a quick trip to the shops, eating out at my favourite restaurants, meeting up with friends, catching an exhibition, attending a music recital, or just sitting at a coffee shop, sipping an excellent cappuccino and watching the world go by.

All of which leads me to believe that I would not enjoy a retirement spent in the mountains or beside a beach. The truth is that I only ever feel truly alive while living in a big city. A city that keeps me engaged through night and day, through the seasons, and indeed, through the years.

A city where there are enough public spaces where I can spend an hour or two with friends, with a good book, or even by myself. A city dotted with museums and monuments, where you can drop by when you want a sense of the past that shapes our present. A city that hosts everything from plays, art exhibitions, musical evenings to seminars and international conferences, to keep your brain stimulated in the best possible way. A city with enough beautiful green areas so that taking a walk doesn’t seem like drudgery. A city that is safe enough for a single woman to negotiate on her own, no matter how late she is getting back home.

At the moment, the city that best fits the bill is Delhi – with its verdant Lodhi Garden, its amazing monuments like Purana Qila and Humayun’s Tomb, and the full menu of programmes at such venues as India International Centre and Habitat Centre. The only area where it falls short is on women’s safety. But with luck, by the time I am old and doddering, that problem will be sorted out.

Until then, I live on a hope and a prayer in my one-level apartment, a stone’s throw away from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). And take comfort in the fact that at least medical help is only a (very) short ambulance ride away.

  

Keep it down, will you?

And try not to break up in restaurants while you are at it

One of the things I enjoy most about eating out alone is the entertainment that is served up on the side, entirely free of charge. This service, which I like to call restaurant theatre, comes courtesy the other guests of the outlet and is guaranteed to liven up even the most boring meal of soup and salad.

On my last visit to my favourite café I asked to be seated in the small terrace outside to enjoy the last of the winter sunshine. A young couple sitting a table away fell silent as I walked in. In a minute or two, they resumed their conversation in hushed whispers. And then, as they became inured to my presence, their voices grew louder
and louder and tantalizing snatches of the conversation began drifting over to my table.

He: “You have no idea what people say behind you back and I have to sit and listen to it…(indistinct)…This is the last time we are having this conversation…I want to have nothing to do with you in that sense after this.”

She: “Do you know how much you are hurting me…(indistinct)…Please I am telling you to stop…(voice raised further)…Please stop this now!”

The conversation then went on to her “ingratitude”, his “insensitivity”, her “inability to sustain any relationship”, his “callous attitude to her needs” and so on.

By the time my pasta arrived I had given up all pretence of reading my book and was eavesdropping unabashedly. This was riveting stuff, better by far than the spy thriller I was in the middle of.

Sadly, it ended all too soon. He got quieter and quieter; she got louder and louder. And when her voice got high enough to attract the attention of the waiters hovering inside, he just got up and walked out.

Typical! Walk out when things get too rough and leave her to settle the bill.

As lovers’ tiffs go, though, this one was rather tame compared to some others I have, willy-nilly, been witness to. I have seen hot tears being shed, letters being shredded on the table, and on one historic occasion, even seen a teenage girl throw a glass of water all over her cheating (or so she said) boyfriend.

And while this is rather entertaining at a purely vicarious level, I can’t help but wonder why people get into tiffs in such public places. Okay, I’ve heard that old tale about how you should always break up in a restaurant so that the dumpee cannot get too upset with the dumper.

But judging by my recent lunch experiences, it doesn’t exactly work that way. People still get upset, cry, make a scene, scream, throw things – undeterred by the fact that they are playing to an audience.

So, why not play this out in private instead?

Part of the problem, of course, is that all of us have a somewhat unreasonable expectation of a degree of privacy in public. We don’t seem to realize that more often than not this privacy is completely illusory.

No matter where you are, so long as you are in public you are never completely alone – someone or the other is always in a position to overhear what you are saying.

That’s exactly why the waiting staff in five-star restaurants in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore or any other metro, is always the most well-informed. The movers and shakers of the city congregate here to wine and dine, inhibitions are lowered by good food, tongues loosened by alcohol, scandalous stories are exchanged, shameful secrets divulged – all within earshot of the waiters who are serving that table.

I’ve always suspected that some of these staffers must be on the payroll of the IB or R&AW, because the quality of the intelligence they can cull from such evenings is priceless. They know who is having an affair with whom; which two business associates have been cosying up to one another; who is in danger of being dropped from the Cabinet;
and so on.

The only people who could give the waiting staff a run for their money in the information stakes are the chauffeurs who drive the Rich and the Powerful around from one meeting to another. They know exactly who the boss is meeting, for how long and when. They can hear every conversation (albeit one-sided) they have on the mobile phone whether it is with the minister or the mistress. A man may not be a hero to his valet but he is certainly an open book to his driver.

Of course, the only reason why these people can access all this information is that most of us treat them as if they were invisible, non-persons who are only there to serve us and then melt away discreetly. So, we fail to acknowledge that they have ears that can
listen and brains that can file away information.

And it’s more of the same in other public places. Even on airplanes, people will start intimate conversations in the front seat, oblivious of the fact that those seated at the back can hear every word they are saying. They will discuss matters of state, the state of their marriages, and everything in between, blissfully unaware that they are sharing all this information with perfect strangers.

So what exactly is going on here? Have we lost spatial awareness? Do we no longer have a sense of appropriateness? Or are we in full-on confessional mode because of our obsessive over-sharing on social media?

Any ideas? Anyone?