60 is the new 40

 My banking career was all about targets and results. Force of habit would be for me to take stock of my life by breaking the total number of years into six decades.

1 to 10: I have sketchy memory of those years like everyone else. I do remember going for long walks with my father after dinner when I would ask him a lot of questions and he would patiently answer them. I remember the time when my mother was having a difficult time managing my twin siblings and me. I was four years old when they were born. The annual vacation trips to my hometown with my maternal grandparents and paternal grandmother showering all their love and attention is etched in my memory.

10 to  20: I remember being very proud of being the best student in every class in school until I was in my 8th standard. I continued with the same school that awaited recognition from the CBSE. Without proper faculty, the whole of 9th standard was a washout and by the end of the year most of my classmates knew that they would have to repeat the class. I moved to a new school and my past performance helped me go to the 10th standard with the promise that I would cover the subjects of two years in one. The travel time of 2 hours from home to school and the double burden took a toll on my academic performance and I was no longer the class topper. This phase of my life saw me lose confidence in my academic abilities but I managed to finish my B.Sc. with a decent grade. I thought seriously about getting job before I turn 20 as my father was due to retire from service around then. 

20 to 30: I secured the job of a clerk in a government owned bank and started my work life in a remote village. It was the first time that I was living on my own. It was a defining decade as I learnt to sift from the chaff and moved forward to achieve the various goals that I had set in life,i.e. continuing my education, becoming a bank officer, getting married & starting a family.

30 to 40: I would call this the luckiest decade as I found great success in the career moves that I made. Another bundle of joy came into the family during this period.

40 to 50: A decade of mixed fortunes where the success of the first half made me overconfident of my own capabilities. The decision to leave the position in the bank to having my own business came from the financial resilience that I thought I had built and the health-debilitating pressure of work that came from my employer. I had, in all possibility, not taken into account the cyclical nature of the economy. Things did not work as planned on the work front and I decided to focus on the family and settled into complacency. I lost my mother to a heart attack and that was the single bad event of that decade. Travel for sight-seeing was also a big focus in these 10 years.

50 to 60: It continued to be family and self for most of this decade. My son went abroad for his higher education and secured a good job and my daughter could follow in her brother’s footsteps. I started running for the sake of health and took to running marathons. My father passed away during this decade. My family got an additional

member as my son got married.

The 60th is the best in my memory of birthdays. The surprise was well worth it! A big thanks to my family and friends for making my birthday remarkable . I don’t feel 60 eventhough my certificates say that I am!