My Age Meter

The day I turned fifty, a couple of my friends came home in the morning to wish me. They were both younger to me by months and hence were anxiously awaiting their golden birthday. One of them wanted to know if I felt old on having reached the Golden Age. I was kind of surprised for in my scheme of things, the modern fifty was equivalent to the thirty of yore. Not bothering to explain that logic, which is there for all the readers of my blog to read, I just told them that the one measure I use to calculate my age is my staircase. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t live on the 10th floor of a skyscraper that does not have a lift. I live in a two storey home where my bedroom is on the first floor. There are precisely nineteen steps to climb and even between these steps there are two landings. When that is the case, there is no reason for me to use the stairs as an yard stick for calculating my age as it is not at all an Herculean task. But the meter quotient is in the way in which I climb. I literally run up and down the stairs. My father who is invariably watching the television in the downstairs hall, hears the thud thud noise made by my feet and there is never a day when he does not comment on the same. He feels that the way in which I charge up and down, could bring about an accident. Thus my reply to my friends when elaborated went like this – the day I can’t climb the stairs, the way I always do, then that day on I would consider myself old.
It has been almost three years since that day and I am happy to say that I still climb or rather shall I say, charge up the stairs. With a bedroom and some other interests on the first floor and most of the mundane happenings on the ground floor, it is inevitable that the said stairs have to be manipulated atleast a dozen times in a day. There have been times when I must have done it more than a couple of dozen times. Every step in that flight of stairs is by heart to me and I know exactly as to the depth of each one of them. This mostly comes in handy during Vishu kanni, when I have to go down the stairs with my eyes closed and enter the pooja room to light the lamp. The staircase is so well embedded in my brain that I can reel off all its features including the number of steps to each landing like the back of my hand. Come to think of it, the staircase is the most used passage in the house as far as I am concerned.
There are innumerable reasons that makes the trips upstairs mandatory and of them all the least important happens to be the fact that my bedroom is situated there. The first and what was the foremost was the fact that I am the youngest adult in the house. I may have reached the golden age but that does not apply in my household where it is my duty to go up and look for things or fetch things which I have placed. Over the years I have trained Narayani and at times I get her to do these chores. Then there is this one household appliance which only I operate and this unfortunately has found a place on the first floor. So everytime a load of clothes have to be washed, I need to make a couple of trips. Then there are ofcourse the innumerable documents which are there for safe keeping and whenever they are required, yours truly has to charge up.
But what really made the trips to the first floor more frequent and enjoyable was the installation of the computer. Initially in 1999 when the computer was bought, it was the excitement of receiving emails and this made me go up atleast three or four times a day to check out if anyone in the whole wide world had anything important or silly to convey to me. Then I started getting smarter and began instant messaging to family and friends. Having them all over the world, I had to make frequent trips in order to catch up with their time zones. I was really excited that I could chat instantaneously with my sisters, cousins and host of friends at the same time. The fact that I learnt typing in my younger days helped me to maneouvre the keyboard of the computer with ease and thus I could manage upto three windows at a given point of time. Thus, almost every hour saw me come up to see as to who was out there for me to exchange news with. The final impetus with regard to the computer which made me increase my charge upstairs was when I started to maintain a blog. Anytime an idea came to my mind, I had to put it in print least I forgot the chain of thought. Kumar seeing my involvement with my writing, thought that it would be convenient if I had a laptop and thus got me one during the middle of last year. The laptop is fine as long as it is the IM, audio or video chat. However for writing my articles, nothing can replace my desktop which has a permanent place on the first floor. The quietness that the first floor offers helps me to think and I consider that corner a sacred one.
Thus the staircase is not only a passage, but it also provides an escape route from the all prevalent hustle and bustle that is “Sowparnika”. The nineteen steps opens the door to a totally serene environment centred mostly around my desktop PC and my sviwel chair. Topics for my blog just flash in my minds eye whenever I am seated there and it seems as if Godess Saraswati has her all pervading presence concentrated in this corner.
With writing having become a passion, there is no doubt that I would like to write as long as I can and this would definitely involve the climb upstairs. The best way I would like to do that is to charge, and thus remain young as far as my biological age goes. As for my mental age, I consider myself to be in my prime what with my writing and sudoku taking care of it.
P.S. If ever I feel that the charge is turning into a trot, I try to do whatever it takes to retain my favoured gait.