It happened all of a sudden. It was a slight twinge. Can she call it a pull? It was the slightest of sensations, almost imperceptible __ , but it was there__ , sharp and real. Sheila felt it in her knee and stopped short. Did she imagine it ? No. She didn't. There was no mistake about it __ but it was gone now. Yet, it had her in its total grip, had incapacitated her for an iota of a second. For a person like Sheila, who strode rather than walked, who ran up the stairs rather than climbed them___ it was a curious feeling. That Sheila's body had failed her seemed so queer, so novel a realization, that she was flummoxed for some time. It, perhaps, was not a betrayal. Sheila was not really worried about it yet. She only knew it to be different, rather strange, and she stood stupefied for a moment. Immediately, however, she grasped the significance of that pin-prick. Sheila was but a part of the natural phenomenon around her. Birth, growth and decay were the phases of a normal human existence. Sheila was fifty plus. Every metabolic activity in her body was certainly at its doldrums . If anything, it was only justified that the process of decay in her should have manifested itself much before. John Keats in 'Human Seasons' had already cautioned her:
' Four Seasons fill the Measure of the year
Four Seasons are there in the mind of Man
.......
Or else he would forget his mortal nature . '
Yet , Sheila could not help admit with a half -smile that she was caught on the wrong foot !
Fifty was an age when one didn't get excited over such mundane facts of life. But that surely was a myth . For, Sheila was all flustered. And just for that little twinge! Oh! for her it was too new an experience, too poignant a moment to ignore. The fact that Sheila too, had started aging was a stunning realization for her. It stupefied her. She was curiously not aghast. Nor did thoughts of consternation nor morbidity baulk her. It was just that she had put her finger on her very life process. Of Sheila's birth, she was quite unaware. Of her adolescence, only vaguely apprehensive, so lost she was in the spate of her animal spirits. But, regarding her 'old-age',---her autumnal phase,----- well, there it was. Curiously , Sheila felt no different from what she used to feel some years ago .Emotionally and spiritually she was as alive and sprightly as a young girl . 'Natasha's' passionate character in War And Peace still moved her, Elizabeth in Pride And Prejudice still inspired her and she often wept with Desireé in her hands .She would become heady with the revolutionary ideas of Shelley and vacillate with the equally adolescent and thought-provoking dissipation of Hamlet as he ponders: 'To Be Or Not To Be. Again, the recent uprising in Iran had had her strung up for the past months and she had cried herself hoarse talking of Anna H, the second Mahatma. Sheila's rendezvous with columnist Patricia Morley , Tavleen Singh, Shobha De' were more delectable than ever. She marveled at what Modi had done for his land, and wondered, pensively, if the Assamese could ever be woken from their stupor. In short, Sheila at fifty, was as agile and as alert as any young woman of twenty. Sheila could not imagine how Keats can say:
'He hath his autumn ports.....
.........he content to look
On Mists in idleness: to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook . '
For, every novel venture still enticed Sheila, warmed her to it and inspired her. But, she was no more a young woman anymore. Then what was the matter with her? Were the stirrings of the twenties in her so strong that she felt no different today? Ulysses was right to opine: 'Old age hath yet his honour and his toil ...'Tis not too late to seek a newer world'. For Sheila too, it was no different.
Sheila moved towards the mirror. She giggled to see see the silvery grey lines on her thinning black hair. Her skin was rough and withered, her body loose and cumbrous. But her soul___she could see the 'girl' in her peering out through her eyes, battling all odds and coming out victorious and happy. She basked in her love of life her and her robust optimism. All her ills, her complaints, her peevishness and selfish streaks waned in the wake of her incredible radiance and youthful brilliance. She marveled at her soul mate --her alter -ego ,the ever youthful Sheila. And she watched herself in the mirror enchanted, she chimed with Coleridge: 'Springtime blossoms on thy lips; And tears take sunshine from thine eyes. 'Our Sheila's 'jawani' cannot have a more salubrious version.
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